[00:00:00] Josh Kidwell: As creatives, we often struggle with questions of identity and purpose. Like, how can I be happy just being an amateur? What is the difference between knowing and experiencing art firsthand? And how can I rediscover the joy of creating in the age of generative AI? We cover these topics and more with today's special guest, David Reed.

[00:00:24] Josh Kidwell: David has taught and played music all over the world. He's currently based in New York. He's the author of the book Improvise for Real and the creator of the Improvise for Real method. I have personally benefited greatly from his experiential approach to understanding music. But before we get started, let's get grounded with three deep breaths.

[00:00:45] Josh Kidwell: Okay. One,

[00:00:52] Josh Kidwell: two,

[00:00:58] Josh Kidwell: three.[00:01:00]

[00:01:05] Josh Kidwell: Okay. As always, remember you are a human being with intrinsic worth. On with the show.

[00:01:16] Josh Kidwell: This is Skills AI Can't Steal.

[00:01:23] Josh Kidwell: Hello everybody. Welcome to Skills AI Can't Steal. The show where creatives like you and me talk about how we can be more and more human in a world that is more and more automated. Today's guest is David Reed. Nice to see you, David. Say hi to the audience. Hi, and thanks for having me on. I'm really looking forward to our chat.

[00:01:41] Josh Kidwell: How would you introduce yourself and 

[00:01:43] David Reed: what you do and who you are? I think the main thing I would say is that I'm a musician and a music lover. My biggest project right now though is Improvise For Real, which I founded about 10 years ago with my wife Mireya. And what we're trying to do is to create a [00:02:00] way for musicians to be able to study music as a creative art form.

[00:02:05] David Reed: I felt that that was something that I was kind of searching for in my own life. Um, and there are a lot of pieces to it. I went on a very long journey myself in order to find a way that I could understand music and explore it creatively and find some joy and satisfaction and all that. And that is the path that we are now trying to make available to everybody.

[00:02:28] Josh Kidwell: I think we can dig into some of the story in a little bit, but first I just wanted to share with you, David, how, how I found your book. I'm not a professional musician or anything. I, I've played clarinet in high school, growing up since third grade and concert band and marching band. And then, you know, as my friends picked up the guitar and wanted to be in bands, I wanted to try and play guitar.

[00:02:53] Josh Kidwell: I played guitar at church on Sunday mornings for years. I got into, uh, The West African [00:03:00] drumming club in college. I love playing cajon. Like more recently I, I realized unless I have a chord sheet in front of my face, here are the chords you play here, and I'm singing the song, playing the chords, and then, but if you take that piece of paper away, I have to really think about playing the chords.

[00:03:18] Josh Kidwell: memorizing what were those chords and what were the patterns. And it was very frustrating to me. And two years ago I thought I'm going to teach myself piano. And I think that seeing a piano, you know, a piano is laid out differently than a guitar. And maybe this might help me understand how music works. I have the Alfred's adult all in one course book over here.

[00:03:44] Josh Kidwell: You know, I messed around with that for a few months, but I still didn't really understand what was going on. Music theory just still seems so arbitrary, like so ambiguous. Okay. So I understand what makes a minor and what makes a [00:04:00] major chord, but why? Like what, what is, what, what reason is there just seems to be a rule with, with no why.

[00:04:08] Josh Kidwell: And then I discovered the Improvise for Real book. I read most, like at least half of it. In the first night, I was just like sitting in bed reading it, and I thought to myself, this, there's something very different about the approach to music here. Reading about the first lesson, I mean, you can describe it more, but like, here's how you play piano.

[00:04:32] Josh Kidwell: Close your eyes, reach out your hand, and press a key on the piano. Ding! Listen to that sound, feel that sound, play it again, and then go one key directly up to the right. Ding! Ding! You know, this is a half step. You're inviting the reader to engage with [00:05:00] music as if you've touched your instrument for the very first time.

[00:05:04] Josh Kidwell: How did you come to create a curriculum based on this discovery versus I know something I'm going to teach it to you? 

[00:05:14] David Reed: Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. That's wonderful. First, let me just kind of go through your backstory a bit, because there's an important realization to have there. One of the first comments you made is, is one of the first comments that almost everybody makes, which is the disclaimer that I'm not a professional musician.

[00:05:34] David Reed: Almost everybody starts their personal story and their relationship with music with the comment that I'm not a musician. And then what they go on to describe is a long, very personal kind of lifelong romance. with music in which they are so enchanted and they're so attracted that they're just drawn to it like a moth is drawn to [00:06:00] a flame.

[00:06:00] David Reed: When you talk about strumming those chords and you're, you're dependent on the chord chart and you don't understand what you're doing, so you can't take that in any other direction. What I see is a person who loves music so deeply and needs it so badly. that even this very partial experience, this very limited and cold experience of kind of being outside it and just playing these chords from a chord chart, even that is enough to draw you in and keep you there, right?

[00:06:34] David Reed: That's how badly you need it. And that is the very essence of a musical artist. One of my favorite words is the word amateur because what it means literally is lover. That's what it means. It means one who loves that's the amateur. And I think it's very relevant to the focus of your podcast, you know, skills that [00:07:00] AI can't replace or steal from us because.

[00:07:04] David Reed: You know, it, it calls into question this whole paradigm that we have so much in, in Western countries. It's so pervasive that we almost can't see it. Like, you know, the expression, I don't know who invented water, but I'm sure it wasn't a fish. Because when you're in the water, you're not aware of it. You don't perceive it.

[00:07:22] David Reed: You think that's just the universe. And in most of the countries that I've lived in, that, that ocean, that paradigm that surrounds us is this, is this idea of this individualist professional imperative where the whole purpose of human existence is to work and make money and accumulate capital. And so you define your self worth and your identity in terms of that professional capacity.

[00:07:53] David Reed: And I think it's really important. to see that clearly and to see that that's kind of a religious cult. And it's [00:08:00] not, it's not obligatory. You don't have to sign up for that. And once you do sign up for that, I think it makes all the rest of the discussion impossible. So I think the first thing you have to do is take a step back and say, okay, well, we live in this modern world and we do have, financial needs, even accessing something as basic as healthcare, being able to go to a doctor when you're sick.

[00:08:18] David Reed: There's this whole game that you have to play. You know, there has to be money in your bank account and so forth, but to not let that become the totality of your paradigm, that that's you, that's all you see. As your existence, if you can step outside that and you go, okay, so that's like, you know, that's like the mundane part of life where I need to pay the bills.

[00:08:36] David Reed: So the point I'm trying to make is that actually the highest and most beautiful place that you could be in with respect to music is to be an amateur because that is the person who does it out of love. It's not a coincidence that almost every great painter that is celebrated in modern museums today never sold a painting within his or her lifetime.

[00:08:57] David Reed: All of those people would have started their [00:09:00] bio by saying, I am not a professional painter. I'm not a professional artist. I'm nobody. And they were the exact opposite of that. They were, they were precisely the most inspired artists. So inspired that they neglected the professional side altogether, or maybe the professional side just wasn't even available to them, but they did it anyway.

[00:09:22] David Reed: Right. And that's also true of many of the great classical composers. Many of the great classical composers. never had enough money to be able to go to one of these modern music halls and buy a ticket and sit down in the audience and listen to a symphony performance of their own work. In other words, we had this whole bourgeois society where we get together and we celebrate the works of these people, but they were of a class that would never have been part of that experience.

[00:09:50] David Reed: And so again, what's the first thing they're going to say is, well, I'm not a professional musician. I'm not a Right. To do anything. And I think [00:10:00] that's, that's the starting point right there is realizing. that we have to stop, um, idolizing professionals, especially professional musicians. You would be amazed if you knew how arbitrary it is to define yourself as a professional musician.

[00:10:17] David Reed: It's literally, you get somebody to pay you for a gig and now you're a professional musician, but that doesn't mean that you know anything or that you have any deeper experience of music than, than the person who's just sitting there playing in the living room for four hours a day. And so I like to think of it more like.

[00:10:33] David Reed: You know, if you think about other aspects of life. in which we would never want to prostitute them. We would never want to contaminate them by doing it for money and making it transactional. That's how I think we can feel about music and the arts and we don't have to feel any shame about the fact that we're not professionals.

[00:10:59] David Reed: [00:11:00] The fact that we love it, that is right there, the seed of our musical genius. That is what it is to understand music. It's that you hear it. And you feel something, and you love it, and you want to be inside it. That's what it means to understand music. 

[00:11:17] Josh Kidwell: Thank you. The amateur is a lover. I think a lot of people, you know, listening to this, creatives, you know, a lot of people are amateur musicians.

[00:11:27] Josh Kidwell: You know, a lot of the people I've worked with in marketing departments and so forth, you know, they're, uh, a designer by day, DJ, you know, producer by night, you know, that Yeah. Yeah, because There is something to music that when you hear something, it takes you back to a place. When you harmonize or play with somebody, there's a magical connection that is kind of indescribable.

[00:11:53] Josh Kidwell: But, but anybody who does pick up an instrument idolizes the professional. You [00:12:00] can't help it. I guess it's, it's part of the society. But thank you for those, those words of encouragement to the amateur who does it for, I mean, we all do it because, because we love it, but that's okay. That's a good, that's okay, that's, that's, that's enough, right?

[00:12:16] David Reed: Exactly, that's all there is. And, and especially in the modern world, um, if the next question is, Can I also use this to make a bunch of money? The answer is probably not. It's probably, it's probably the least interesting thing you could do to solve your financial problems, but that's not why we do it. And some people do it, you know, some people, they play gigs or they teach or whatever, and that's great too.

[00:12:41] David Reed: It just doesn't have any, um, relevance to the, the importance of this practice in your life. And I think that. I mean, it's natural to, like you say, we all idolize professionals. That's fine. Because what, what that's doing, when you see somebody up on a stage and you're blown away by that, and you know that you want that, um, that person is just [00:13:00] representing to you, this kind of.

[00:13:01] David Reed: euphoric experience of music that you want to have. And so it's, it's good that you're attracted to that. You're seeing yourself in that other person and you want that experience. It's just really important to separate these things and realize that, um, actually being up there on the stage, having the gig, being known as a professional musician is completely separate.

[00:13:21] David Reed: It's just a totally separate thing from having that deep, beautiful euphoric experience of music. That's an experience that you can have. By yourself. It's an experience you can have with your friends. It's available to all of us. The question is how much am I going to let this paradigm of sort of capitalist careerism invade my identity?

[00:13:45] David Reed: Is it even going to take over my love of music? You know, where I can't even. explore music sincerely for my own love and my own enjoyment, because I've got this label on myself that, you know, I'm a professional or I'm not a [00:14:00] professional or where is this leading and how will I make money from it? And what's my career and all that, like all that, all that noise, we all have it, you know, I'm not, I'm not trying to be judgmental of anybody.

[00:14:09] David Reed: We all have that noise in our minds, but if we could just. Quiet our minds and go back to the way we all lived when we were ten years old and you would just look at this beautiful day before you and it's early in the morning and you can do anything you want all day long and there's silence and whatever you gravitate toward In that, in that context of, of freedom and innocence with no ulterior motives, why not just do that?

[00:14:40] David Reed: You know, why not do that and believe in it and just give yourself permission to enjoy it. And, and kind of the punchline at the end of all of this is that, Oh, by the way, if you do that, that is the only path to becoming a professional musician. I have, I have never in my life known any good musician who ever actually wanted to be a good musician.

[00:14:59] David Reed: They just [00:15:00] don't care. You become a good musician because you are addicted to music like a heroin addict is addicted to heroin. And you just go do it all the time. And if you live enough in that world, Of course, you will eventually develop skills that other people say, wow, you know, he's a natural, he's so skillful, but it doesn't matter.

[00:15:18] David Reed: That's not why you're doing it. It's a by product. What matters is that you have found this paradise and that paradise is available to all of us. You don't have to have a high level. You don't have to have a lot of skills and you don't have to be a professional. You can be experiencing that paradise from the very first day.

[00:15:35] Josh Kidwell: Okay, anyone can experience this paradise. What? Yes. What do you, what do you mean? Ha, ha, ha, ha. Yeah. Most people are like, musical paradise? Yeah. 

[00:15:46] David Reed: So there are some really wonderful gifts that are waiting for us. There's some really nice things that, uh, Um, just nice surprises that are waiting to be discovered that make this whole journey much more easy and [00:16:00] enjoyable than one would suspect in the beginning.

[00:16:04] David Reed: And one of those is that literally all your life you have been surrounded by essentially seven notes. and the seven chords that we can make from these seven notes. And what that has done for you is it's already developed that kind of language center in your brain to understand all of that perfectly.

[00:16:25] David Reed: And so what, what is preventing you from, um, expressing yourself through music? It does start with the most fundamental thing is kind of your mindset. And so it starts with that. And I love that image that you described of starting by playing a single note on your instrument. and learning to move up just by a half step using that as, uh, an opportunity to kind of check in, quiet your mind, connect yourself with, with your instrument, but also connect yourself with this musical system.

[00:16:55] David Reed: Now, it's not obvious to people how to do that depending on your instrument. Right. A lot of [00:17:00] people have no idea how to move up by a half step. And so that's also a skill. We have to learn to project the notes of our musical landscape onto our instrument, but we can be learning that skill. within an environment that feels spiritual and beautiful.

[00:17:17] David Reed: It should feel like a yoga class or a martial arts class. It should feel like something relaxing and easy and exciting and fun. And so once we have that, and so now you have this ability, like you said, you're inside the world of your instrument. You can move up by a half step. You can move up by another half step.

[00:17:34] David Reed: You can move up by another half step. More importantly, you can move up You're in control. You have now suddenly found yourself transported to this imaginary world in which you're the one who's going to decide which direction you go. And you're going to decide how fast you go and how hard you play. And you're in total control.

[00:17:53] David Reed: Now that, now we've got the vehicle built. Now we have the vehicle. Now we, it's like the Mars Rover or whatever. Now we can explore Mars [00:18:00] because now you just need somebody to say, okay, you can do that. Now let's overlay. this basic map of, of Western tonality, which is the seven notes that I was talking about earlier.

[00:18:11] David Reed: And, and so learning to move by that sequence of intervals, what you're now doing is from the same place of autonomy. So you're the one deciding where you go and when, but now you're not just experiencing that chromatic scale of half steps. Now you're experiencing the seven notes of the Western musical system.

[00:18:32] David Reed: And so that's when you're starting to discover all these melodies that you've heard all your life. Oh, that's where that lives. That's where these sounds are. And I can go into them. I can go out of them. I can weave my own melodies. Now, obviously. The journey to understand all modern harmony so that you can play over songs and things like that is not one that you learn in a day, but it's also not one that you have to worry about because the whole point of teaching an art [00:19:00] form is not to tell people what to do or what to play.

[00:19:02] David Reed: It's to help them organize. all that world and see it as, as this vast, beautiful landscape that they can explore at their own pace. And that's exactly what we're doing with improvise for real. The whole point is that we organize that journey for you and your job is just to enter that world. with a quiet mind and excitement in your heart and explore those sounds and make your own music with them in each of these contexts that we are going to put you in.

[00:19:32] Josh Kidwell: Right. 

[00:19:33] David Reed: And like I say, one of the nice kind of surprises about Western Harmony is that is it is so much simpler than people realize. 

[00:19:41] Josh Kidwell: Yeah. Like why does music lessons feel so intimidating? Like I was going to ask you about music education for kids later, but I'll just bring it up right now. I have two daughters, seven and nine.

[00:19:52] Josh Kidwell: I'm thinking about like, how do I introduce them to music? Like I have the piano in the living room. I have like some ukuleles and a guitar sitting over there [00:20:00] and they come over and bang on it and strum on it. And I'll be like, here's one ding, ding, ding. Here's two. Did it. Anyhow, I remember when I was in maybe seventh grade and I was really keen on learning guitars, my mom was like, I'll get you a guitar teacher.

[00:20:14] Josh Kidwell: It was probably a good guitar teacher, but it quickly became this sort of like theory, here's how to play this. Here's how to play this. The end. Even recently my mom asked me like, why did you stop with that guitar teacher? And I was like, why? Something lost my interest in my seventh grade mind when, you know, I just wanted to play Oasis or something like that.

[00:20:37] Josh Kidwell: And, and then, you know, whenever I think about music in a learning situation or a more serious environment, I still have anxiety nightmares of like playing clarinet alone on stage or something 

[00:20:52] David Reed: like that. Yeah. Oh my God. There's so many aspects to that. It goes off in so many directions. I think the first thing [00:21:00] that we should acknowledge is that there's a moving target here.

[00:21:02] David Reed: We're talking about a culture that is changing and it's changing very fast. So almost anything that I say about what was lacking in the musical education that was available to me when I was a kid is already, these problems are being fixed, you know, faster than you and I can even summarize them. And I just want to kind of put that out there that there are a lot of people working on this and it's not just us at Improvise For Real.

[00:21:27] David Reed: There are many, many people who see the world exactly the way you're describing it and are asking that exact same question. Music is by far The easiest art form to learn. And it's the one that most people in the world enjoy consuming. You know, if you go around asking how many people like poetry, how many people are actually like active fans of sculpture, how many people are really interested in painting, um, the numbers are pretty low.

[00:21:53] David Reed: But then you go to any group of kids and ask, okay, who likes music here? Right. And 99 percent of them are going to say they love [00:22:00] it. So this is something we all get instinctively as consumers. And it's also the easiest by far, it's the easiest art form to learn in terms of what I mean by that is that there is the shortest learning curve.

[00:22:13] David Reed: between knowing absolutely nothing and being able to do something really fun that sounds great and makes you feel like you're expressing yourself. That that lag time in music is shorter than any other art form. And so what are we doing? How is it that music teachers have made such a mess of this that this easy, accessible art form appears to so many people as this just totally opaque, mysterious, complicated world that they could never get into, and they're not good enough, and I'm not creative, and I'm not a musician, all that.

[00:22:48] David Reed: So that is the, that is the inspiration for Improvise For Real was seeing that problem clearly. And, you know, all of these questions about why the situation is the way it is, I feel like there are no [00:23:00] answers to these questions other than, Let's go do it. Let's go make a way that people can, can study music through their own experience and through their own creativity and actually have some understanding of what the heck they're doing and feel some creative freedom over it.

[00:23:16] David Reed: It's an easy thing to do. I don't understand why nobody else has done it before. And we're not the only ones working on it, but we are definitely the only ones who have developed it as far as we have. There are, there are people out there that are, they're like, they're on the case. You can tell that they're sensing the same opportunity that you're talking about.

[00:23:34] David Reed: And they, and they'll give advice. Like, Yeah. Yeah. You know, you should think about it this way, or maybe you could let go of those beliefs, or, you know, this is what music practice ideally should look like. What, what's unique about us is that we're the ones that made the journey of a thousand miles to build that entire learning program for you based on that philosophy, but we're not the only ones working on it.

[00:23:57] David Reed: And within, I'm sure not, not very [00:24:00] much time, there will be alternatives. I think that we're going into a really exciting period. where there are a lot of very brilliant people working on kind of restoring the birthright of music to the people. Um, and we're not 

[00:24:12] Josh Kidwell: the only ones. You've been talking about being inside of the music.

[00:24:19] Josh Kidwell: Recently, I was finishing up your recognizing chords by ear course, and then I was wanting to try one of the guitar courses, but then I got carpal tunnel. So my hands, it's, I've been kind of depressed. Like the, the thing that I, you know, I want to, I want to either play guitar or like just mess around on the piano.

[00:24:44] Josh Kidwell: But my hand started to hurt and went to go see a doctor, like icing, stretching. But then I remembered that you also have this Sing the Numbers course where you can sort of just play the musical instrument in your head with numbers [00:25:00] as a way of taking that one step further. Can you talk about how You developed that course or, or like, what is seeing the numbers?

[00:25:11] Josh Kidwell: Like, why, why was that even important to develop that ability? And in those times where either you can't play cause you have couple of tunnel or you don't have your instrument with you. I'm like lying in bed. I'm like, Hmm. I'm like, Oh yeah. I can sort of like be playing an instrument without having an instrument.

[00:25:29] Josh Kidwell: This is a totally new paradigm. 

[00:25:33] David Reed: Yeah, I mean that's a really deep subject that you just opened up. It's our own, you know, our own mortality, our own physical frailty, injuries like carpal tunnel. Those repetitive motion injuries. are really insidious because they can develop quite quickly, but they don't get healed quickly.

[00:25:54] David Reed: And so it's a real lesson in humility. It's just not the kind of thing you can't, you just can't bring [00:26:00] this sort of Western pragmatic attitude to it that, yeah, I'm going to do the stretching and the ice baths or whatever, and I'm going to fix this and then keep moving on my journey. It's just one of those things in life that is, is going to frustrate you.

[00:26:13] David Reed: It's going to frustrate your ambitions and it's going to make you feel that you can't do what you wanted to do. And that feels like a curse, but it's actually a blessing because there's a lesson that the universe is trying very hard to teach you and you're really onto it. It's that, it's that question of, you know, where is my musical identity located?

[00:26:38] Josh Kidwell: Is 

[00:26:38] David Reed: it inside the guitar? Is it inside my fingers? If I were suddenly paralyzed and I lost the use of my left hand, would I no longer be a musical being? And so it forces you to ask that question. And the only rational conclusion that everybody comes to is that, Okay, I get it. You know, my musical imagination is inside of me.

[00:26:59] David Reed: And I can [00:27:00] express that in, in infinite ways. And we have all of these instruments that we've created that are so much fun because they allow us to have these different voices and these different sounds that we can create, but we can also sing and we can also just imagine. And so that relationship with music is inside you.

[00:27:18] David Reed: And that's an important realization to have. And it takes some of the pressure off. your carpal tunnel, that if your, if your hands need a couple of years without playing the guitar, that's actually totally fine. And that's not to say that you won't enjoy playing the guitar again, but I think the only way you can get there is to let go of your need to play the guitar, because I think that your hands need more time to rest than you would ever imagine.

[00:27:37] David Reed: And so the best thing you can do is to get really excited about other wonderful things that you can do that don't put any strain at all. on 

[00:27:46] Josh Kidwell: your hands. I really like how in your courses and in the book you say like, try this now. What did you really enjoy? Now, you know, focus on what you discovered. Right.

[00:27:59] Josh Kidwell: And I'm [00:28:00] like, you know, one, two, three, four, three, four, three. I'm like, wow, four and three are so close. And, and just noticing that like if it was had been, taught to me, like, notice that, you know, this is this and this is this, play it like this, stumbling upon these things yourself and being like, I kind of like that.

[00:28:23] Josh Kidwell: Yeah. Or this is the thing that I heard in that other music. That's what they're doing. You found that shiny object yourself and it's more special because 

[00:28:32] David Reed: that's right. That's right. The map. That's the point. That's the point that the map, the map is very useful. Music theory as a map can be very helpful, but it doesn't replace the territory.

[00:28:42] David Reed: And so the whole problem that so many musicians have with learning music is that they're stuck in this world of their map and somebody tells them about note four and tells them about note three and tells them what to do with note four and what to do with note three. They haven't had the personal experience of [00:29:00] really feeling that.

[00:29:00] David Reed: Just that little melody that you just sang, that illustrates it perfectly. That, that, That feeling of suspension that we, that you, you created when you walked up to note four and how that relaxed when you came down to no three. And it's because in what you were singing, we were all feeling no one kind of implicitly as, as what we call our tonal center, all of these things.

[00:29:21] David Reed: have many different manifestations in music. But the point is that you were describing a personal experience of having felt something, having savored something. And then because you have your map, you know that, okay, those were notes four and three. And so that's what that is. And trying to understand music or I think any art form without that direct personal experience is like trying to understand the world from a map without ever leaving your house.

[00:29:49] David Reed: And experiencing that world. A map is a very useful thing. It can take you, you know, it can take you to Washington Square Park or whatever. But, but The map is not going to tell you fundamentally what [00:30:00] it is, what Washington Square Park is. You have to go to the park and you're like, oh, this is what it is, right?

[00:30:05] David Reed: And now on my map, I can see where it is, so I can come back here anytime I want. But it's, it's your personal experience of it that is the only understanding that means anything. There's nothing anybody can tell you about any of these sounds that is going to be even remotely useful to you. All they can tell you is the map to them.

[00:30:27] David Reed: They can tell you, okay, here's where to go find that sound, but then, but then check it out for yourself. And so a lot, I mean, you, you hit on the key word there, which is notice. I think that I don't know the word for it in pedagogy, if there is a name for this, you know, belief in teaching, but whether music theory tries to be prescriptive in telling you what to do, or even descriptive in telling you what's done.

[00:30:53] David Reed: I think none of that. Amounts to very much without your own personal experience of it. 

[00:30:59] Josh Kidwell: Tell me if [00:31:00] this rings true, having a map, the lay of the land, and then you being like, oh, I want to visit here, or go there, and discovering your way through the, through the terrain, and, and finding things that aren't even on the written map, versus, versus our experience every day with, like, GPS.

[00:31:19] Josh Kidwell: I get in the car, beep, beep, beep, I want to go here, I want to sound like that. Beep. Take me there and, you know, do do, and 500 feet, turn left, turn right, play this note, play that note, play this note next. And, so, so maybe here's where we can kind of get into this, back ourselves up into this conversation a bit about, um, artificial intelligence, you know, where there's this promise of direct experience, you can discover yourself, or there's this It's becoming easier and easier to make things look cool or sound cool, right?

[00:31:54] Josh Kidwell: Generative. Right. Like I can, I've talked to other people, like, it can generate a poem or it can generate an image [00:32:00] and now it can generate music and music that I, I like this artist and this artist create me a song that is at this tempo with these instruments. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. You know, that's, that's cool.

[00:32:15] Josh Kidwell: You know, novel. And I'm not saying it's like, Intrinsically bad, but I just want to have a conversation about, like, why should we bother to go through the trouble, like Yeah, 

[00:32:26] David Reed: you're raising a, you're raising a great point. That's such a great metaphor. What I love about your, um, your portrait there of a person following GPS instructions versus seeing the map and choosing where to go, is that it really gets to the kind of the most exciting question about this whole AI dilemma.

[00:32:48] David Reed: So on the professional side, we frame this as the danger of computers becoming more like humans, making our professional output obsolete or less valuable. [00:33:00] But I think the deeper issue here is humans becoming more like computers. When I picture The image that you were describing of a, of a, a homo sapiens driving around in a, in a vehicle, being told when to turn left by this GPS, you know, automated voice.

[00:33:17] David Reed: Turn left here, go 400 meters, turn right. It's hard to avoid the observation that this person is living like a machine. This person is just taking instructions and it's because it's because we bought into this. paradigm of capitalist productivity to the point where we can no longer even conceive of driving to our destination in anything less than the most efficient way.

[00:33:43] David Reed: And so I no longer have the freedom to wander around. I no longer have the freedom to get lost. I certainly don't have any extra time today because everybody's always feeling pressured to get wherever they're trying to go as quickly as possible. And so of course I'm going to use the GPS and I'm just going to be told what's the most efficient way to get there.[00:34:00]

[00:34:01] David Reed: I think that But if you want to have a different experience, then you need to kind of step, step back and get a grip on yourself and realize that it's not the GPS that's doing that to you. It's not AI. It's not technology that is forcing you to live in this ever more regimented kind of automated way.

[00:34:21] David Reed: You've bought into that. You have, you have accepted those values and you've decided that getting to my destination in the fastest, most efficient way. is really the most important thing to me today. And if that is the most important thing, then that's great. But don't expect to also recover the feeling of freedom that you had when you were 10 years old to lie in the grass and look at the clouds.

[00:34:42] David Reed: If you want to feel that way, then you have to go lie in the grass and look at the clouds. Like, technology is not going to give that to you. The modern economy is not going to create that space for you. But you can reclaim it. And, and I think that that is also fundamental in the arts. There are these different ways that [00:35:00] we can approach this question, right?

[00:35:01] David Reed: If you are. If, if your concern right now is how do I continue to make my creative work and sell it in, in, in this evolving technology landscape where the tools are advancing so quickly and now there's AI and, you know, every six months my skill set becomes obsolete, um, you know, that's, that's kind of a practical sort of careerist challenge and we can talk about that.

[00:35:30] David Reed: I'm not really an expert on that. Um, what I, what I know a lot more about is, is kind of the other side of it, which is, which is, okay, like you said, if, if AI can come along and make that creative output faster, better, more interesting than I can, um, what is the purpose of my art? What is the purpose of playing music?

[00:35:56] David Reed: Does it matter? Does it matter if AI can [00:36:00] make compositions that are in every way superior to mine? Well, did it matter when other humans were able to make compositions that were in every way superior to mine? In other words, what's, what is the point of practicing any art form in the first place? Is it, is it a talent show?

[00:36:17] David Reed: Is it to show our fellow humans how wonderful we are and that we did this thing that nobody's ever thought of doing before? Or is there an experience that we're trying to access? Is this something we're doing for our own spiritual enrichment for our own personal enjoyment. Um, I think if you ask that question, then it, then it gets you on the right path.

[00:36:37] Josh Kidwell: For my own enrichment. Yeah. 

[00:36:40] David Reed: And you can, I mean, you can answer that question any way. Right. There are people who, you know, maybe for very good reasons are motivated by the desire to express themselves to their fellow humans and be a rock star and all that. And that's wonderful. But that's a whole, that's a whole separate thing in life.

[00:36:54] David Reed: And I don't know much about that. All I know is, is that I feel like [00:37:00] AI is not taking away the opportunity to have a deep and beautiful and personal experience of the world. If anything, it's making that easier because it is, it's sabotaging whatever AI does. to kind of destroy our dreams of financial success through our creative output is actually setting us free.

[00:37:27] David Reed: It's setting us free because the minute we get clear about that and we stop prostituting ourselves thinking about how much, you know, how, how can I make more money from my graphic design or whatever. Once we become, you know, economically useless. Then we can sit down and say, well, what do you want to do today?

[00:37:46] David Reed: And that's when we can go back to the graphic design from a completely different mindset as amateurs, as lovers of that art form without any ulterior motive. I'm not saying you [00:38:00] don't have to pay your rent. I'm just saying that perhaps, perhaps unhitching these two things, the financial rewards from the creative satisfaction, Maybe it's actually a good and necessary thing that sets us free and enables us to enjoy our art form a thousand times more deeply.

[00:38:19] Josh Kidwell: You see that? I did not see that coming. But, uh, and I guess once you disconnect these two things, we still have to pay the bills. And probably talking about this and, you know, first world problems. 

[00:38:33] David Reed: I think you said another really interesting thing there when you said first world problems. And I think it's important to let go of any guilt that we feel about, you know, So, you know, like our problems in the first world, there's sort of this narrative, right, that those can't be taken seriously because we're the, we're the selfish ones, we're the greedy ones, we're the economic winners.

[00:38:54] David Reed: And so our problems don't matter. But actually, um, you hit on something [00:39:00] really important there that I've spent a lot of time in countries that. Don't consider themselves to be part of the first world. I've lived a lot of my life in South America and Central America I've spent several months in Africa and You know, it really is true that in a lot of places That don't have these first world problems.

[00:39:20] David Reed: Ironically, a lot of these people are playing music all day long. Yeah So, you know, you can go to Senegal and find kids that Okay, like all they're going to eat today is like a bowl of rice with some fish sauce on it because that's just kind of, you know, that's what grandma was able to get together tonight.

[00:39:38] David Reed: And so they're not materially wealthy, but they are going to spend eight hours today playing drums together. And, and isn't it interesting that here we are at the kind of apex predator of the global capitalist economy, right? And so we're supposed to be so powerful. You would think we would all just be.

[00:39:56] David Reed: running around giving each other high fives all day for being the [00:40:00] winners in this, this, you know, horrific global competition. And we'd be playing music all day because we're the rich people and we're so successful. And it's the exact opposite of what's happening. You come, you come to the Western countries to find people who are so neurotic and so stressed out 20 minutes a day to play their instrument.

[00:40:19] David Reed: And so I think it's important to really honor that there are first world problems that when you grow up in the middle of a very extreme. kind of cult that drives certain values into you. Whether those values are good or bad, um, it does put you in a predicament where finding your own values and your own path in life, um, is, is really a challenge.

[00:40:41] David Reed: There are psychological challenges that kids have in the advanced Western countries that kids in poor countries don't have. And they have other challenges. I'm not diminishing the, the struggles and the, and the pain and the difficulty of, of, of, of living in a poor country, but being in sort of the center of the, the global industrial capitalist [00:41:00] economy also, you know, marks us emotionally and gives us, gives us a whole set of like psychological issues that we have to kind of work through and just to find our own place in the world.

[00:41:14] Josh Kidwell: I feel like. When I can be in that space, just sitting in front of the piano, or just strumming in the corner, it takes you somewhere that's not in the capitalist industrial complex, but away somewhere, you know, where self expression catharsis can be, can be found and can be enjoyed, and You know, it's kind of a meditation.

[00:41:42] Josh Kidwell: It's, it's self care. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:41:46] David Reed: Yeah. I think that's, that's, that's really important. It's just knowing that that place is there and not, not allowing it to get replaced by this all consuming obsession with, You know, [00:42:00] what am I going to do with my life and how am I going to contribute to society and how am I going to pay my bills?

[00:42:04] David Reed: All of which are very important questions also. We do live in a world that is organized for us to give us lots of opportunities and lots of ways that we can make a contribution to our fellow humans. Um, and there are exciting opportunities there as well. I don't want to, I don't mean to sound in any way like dismissive or hostile to those, to those people.

[00:42:26] David Reed: Practical aspects of life. I just want to kind of maybe remind people that you also have your own personal experience of your life. And I don't know what the meaning of life is, but I know that, you know, you're not just here to be productive. You're not just here to see how much money you can put in your bank account and whatever we can do to kind of disconnect from the world and reconnect with.

[00:42:58] David Reed: ourselves [00:43:00] and our environment and this amazing gift that we've been given called life. Um, I think to me is, I mean, that's like, you know, giving water to plants. That's, that's, that's what nourishes us and makes, makes life. meaningful and joyful and our art forms can be precisely the thing that does that for us.

[00:43:26] Josh Kidwell: Um, why, why create music when you can, can, when we can so readily consume and have something else created for us? Maybe we, did we cover this already? 

[00:43:37] David Reed: Uh, yeah, it's okay. Fantastic question. Uh, well, yeah. Why, why create music? Um, the two things that I, I think will always be relevant. are immersing yourself in that, in that artistic world for your own enrichment.

[00:43:57] David Reed: Okay. So it's something that you're doing fundamentally because [00:44:00] you enjoy it and because it feels meaningful to you. And, and the other thing is, I, I believe there is still always going to be a place for expressing yourself to your fellow humans, not because your music is better than what's being generated by AI.

[00:44:16] David Reed: I'm not, I'm not going to listen to your music, Or check out your, uh, visual art because it's better than something somebody else can produce or better than something that AI can produce. I'm going to check it out because, uh, Because I love you as a person, I want to know what you have to say. It's a way that I can understand what you want to express because we care about each other.

[00:44:40] David Reed: We will listen to each other speak and play music and do art. I don't think we have to be better or more clever than AI in order to, to preserve that, that aspect of our culture. 

[00:44:53] Josh Kidwell: Yeah, people matter, relationships matter, we listen to each other and we play [00:45:00] imperfectly and listen imperfectly because we're invested in, in human beings, in, in those, in people, right?

[00:45:12] Josh Kidwell: Knowing that it comes from a particular place gives it meaning. Right. Right. Right. 

[00:45:17] David Reed: Yeah, I'm reminded of the image of the, the drawing hanging on the refrigerator made by a five year old. Right? Like every parent. Yeah. When that child comes home with a drawing, every parent is so touched by that and they, and they celebrate it and they want to hang it on their refrigerator and just admire it for days and days and days.

[00:45:35] David Reed: Isn't it, isn't it amazing that we already had that? We already had that captive audience when we were five years old just because our parents loved us. And then somehow we got so distracted or so obsessed with perfecting our art that somewhere along the line, we kind of lost that and we got confused and we got this other belief that our art [00:46:00] needs to be unique and clever and, and amazing and innovative in order for people to love it.

[00:46:05] David Reed: And we already had the love that we wanted back with that drawing we made when we were five years old, but maybe it's a, a failure of our own humility, you know, in a, in a desire. to want to make amazing world changing art. Maybe we're overreaching and maybe, maybe we'd be happier if we could simply accept this beautiful gift that we've been given, which is that we can make art and the people that care about us will check it out and receive it and allow us to express ourselves to them in that way.

[00:46:39] David Reed: And as long as we keep our ambitions at that level of reality and humility, I think we have a clear path to having a pretty amazing life.

[00:46:51] Josh Kidwell: I think that sums it up pretty good. Now that I've been an amateur all my life, I should feel like I need to level [00:47:00] up or have something to show for it, but it's always been Yeah, yeah. What if, what if there's nothing to achieve? 

[00:47:07] David Reed: What if, what if you're actually perfect and whole? Just exactly as you are.

[00:47:14] David Reed: And it's, it's hard cause you know, like our, our professional lives are training this sort of other, you know, thought process, right? These other neural circuits in our brain, you know, are all programmed by. You know, we have to be better. We've got to do this more efficiently. We have to do something amazing.

[00:47:28] David Reed: We have to make our company successful. And, and it's, it's that whole, um, kind of context of, of endless competition. Um, and we all need to participate in that to some extent or other as just sort of making peace with the modern world, but we don't have to let it reprogram our brains to the point where that's all we can see.

[00:47:47] David Reed: You know, there has to, I think there has to be a part of our, of our existence that we, that we protect, you know, and that we. Um, we defend with this idea that, that I [00:48:00] don't need to be anything, I don't need to do anything. I mean, maybe I need to do things on a practical level in order to pay my rent. But as a human, for my existence to, to be fully realized, uh, I don't need to get good at something.

[00:48:14] David Reed: I don't need to be better than somebody. I don't, I don't need to demonstrate my worth. And because that's such an empty pursuit because, you know, the old expression, you know, the people who. The people who care about those accolades, you know, don't matter. And the people in your life who really matter don't care about those accolades.

[00:48:30] David Reed: Right. 

[00:48:31] Josh Kidwell: Right. Whose opinions do I actually care about? 

[00:48:34] David Reed: Yeah, yeah. And so, like, if you think about that, it becomes more revolutionary, you know, that, you know, in, in our daily lives, we can, we can try to create a different world. We can create a different world with different values where, you know, Where now we can be the, the beacon of light that kind of encourages other people to feel that they're enough and that we can make art together and we can make music together and we can [00:49:00] actively oppose any sort of, uh, value judgments and really cultivate a safe space where this can just be about the pure enjoyment of expressing ourselves through these art forms.

[00:49:13] Josh Kidwell: And that's probably the best gift we can give to ourselves and the people who know us and the people we love, right? It's so hard to, to model that. I mean, like I have, I have two young kids and I'm, I'm like, this is exactly. I'm like, you should accept yourself the way you are, right? That's one thing. But to live that way, so they see it, and whatever you do, you know, music or other creative pursuits or work, can we resist that, uh, need to be more than we are and just accept who we 

[00:49:49] David Reed: are.

[00:49:50] David Reed: Yeah, you're right, and just from my own experience from my parents and everybody else's experience that I know, I know you're right. That words are not [00:50:00] enough. That the, that if, if you really want to give your children an experience of the world in which they feel safe and they feel entirely valid and they feel beautiful and important just for being who they are, the very best thing you could do is to try to cultivate that same feeling of safety in yourself.

[00:50:17] David Reed: That if you can just go through the world in that way, you, you create a world in which that's just normal and your kids will relax into that world. I love that insight. I think that's a really brilliant insight. 

[00:50:29] Josh Kidwell: Super exciting. Okay. Um, so at the end of each podcast, I always ask the guest, do you have any, like, a parting challenge, nugget of wisdom that you'd like to share with the audience?

[00:50:46] Josh Kidwell: There are people listening who are creatives who, their interest is piqued by what we've been talking about. I think if there's one. 

[00:50:56] David Reed: message or topic that we've talked about today that seems to [00:51:00] supersede all the others. It's the importance of stepping back and seeing this moment in history for what it is and seeing our place on that landscape and not allowing any one dimension of it to be the totality of it or to dominate our thinking or to, or to force us into patterns of behavior And which we're not even thinking.

[00:51:28] David Reed: I see the landscape in these three huge areas. One are the very practical concerns of just making it in the modern world. And as a creative, the way to do that is not obvious. There are probably more opportunities today than ever before, but none of it is spelled out for you. And many of those opportunities don't even exist yet.

[00:51:49] David Reed: You have to create them. You have this fertile landscape in which you can create opportunities for yourself, but nobody comes along to do it for you. And so that's a whole set of [00:52:00] fascinating challenges in itself. But that is not the totality of your existence. That is just your sort of financial means and your contribution to society.

[00:52:10] David Reed: But then there's also this ultimately more important question of who you are and what's the meaning of your life and what brings you joy and satisfaction, how you want to preserve your humanity. Within this context, right? And we've talked about that a lot and how our art can be a resource for that. But then there's this third dimension that we haven't really talked about, but it's kind of the elephant in the room, which is our civic responsibility.

[00:52:35] David Reed: So we're talking about the disconnect sometimes between the practical demands of life and what actually brings us joy as humans. But this is not, this didn't fall from the sky. The society we have is a society that was created by people and people can also change the society for better or for worse.

[00:52:52] David Reed: And so there's also this whole sort of political, philosophical realm of modern life, which is, you know, where is [00:53:00] society going and how can I help to, to shape that so that as these new technologies like AI come into play, I don't think this is a moment to just be sort of passive or nihilistic about that.

[00:53:11] David Reed: I think it's a moment to. To be very active in, in talking with our friends and family and neighbors and seeing how we can use this moment to bring about a better world and to, and to shape our society in a way that that brings more harmony into all three of these areas of our lives.

[00:53:32] Josh Kidwell: Thank you for, thank you for this conversation that we've had. It's, it's been a delight. It's, uh, exceeded my expectations. That's wonderful. Thank you. Thank 

[00:53:43] David Reed: you. You're, you're an amazing, uh, listener. You have very deep thoughts that you express in such a simple and humble way that it's really a joy to talk with you.

[00:53:55] Josh Kidwell: Thank you. I appreciate that coming from you. [00:54:00] So before we sign off, where can people find out more? More about what you do, Improvise For Real. Yeah, just improviseforreal. 

[00:54:07] David Reed: com, improviseforreal. com. Everything will always be 

[00:54:11] Josh Kidwell: focused 

[00:54:12] David Reed: there. 

[00:54:12] Josh Kidwell: So, listeners, do check it out. I've found it to be an amazing resource.

[00:54:18] Josh Kidwell: Thank you very much, David, for your time. I really appreciate it. 

[00:54:22] David Reed: Yeah. I want to thank you and thank you for everything you're doing with your podcast. I think it's just what we need right now. 

[00:54:30] Josh Kidwell: That wraps up the interview. David, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and music with us. Please check out David's website and educational materials at improviseforreal.

[00:54:41] Josh Kidwell: com. There's going to be links in the show notes. If this was at all encouraging or informative, please, please share with a friend and don't forget to rate us in the app store. Let's all take one more deep breath and remember you are a human being with intrinsic worth. Thank [00:55:00] you.