States regulating of AIs for mental health [We need to be very careful about this]

Tyler Cowen has a link to this post: What's up with the States (Dean Ball, Hyperdimensional, Aug. 21, 2025):

This newsletter first started picking up readers because of my writing about AI regulations in state governments. I have a background in state and local policy, having spent the plurality of my career working at think tanks that specialized in such issues. In 2024, I was one of the early people to raise concerns about what I perceived to be a torrent of state-based AI laws, including, most notably, California’s now-failed SB 1047.

The torrent of state bills has only grown since then, with more than 1,000 having been introduced this year. Most of the lawmakers who draft such statutes are not acting with malice; instead, they feel motivated by an urge “to do something about AI.”

This may not feel like a great reason to pass “a law about AI,” (generally, laws should solve specific problems, not scratch the itches of random state legislators), but states are sovereign entities. In the absence of a federal legislative framework that preempts this sovereign power, this torrent will continue. [...]

But for now, I want to give you a sense of what is actually happening in state AI regulation by examining two categories of recent laws (“AI in mental health” and “frontier AI transparency”) that either have passed or seem likely to pass.

Cowen featured a passage about Nevada's mental health law, which is a category that interests me. Here's the passage Tyler quotes:

Several states have banned (see also “regulated,” “put guardrails on” for the polite phraseology) the use of AI for mental health services. Nevada, for example, passed a law (AB 406) that bans schools from “[using] artificial intelligence to perform the functions and duties of a school counselor, school psychologist, or school social worker,” though it indicates that such human employees are free to use AI in the performance of their work provided that they comply with school policies for the use of AI. Some school districts, no doubt, will end up making policies that effectively ban any AI use at all by those employees. If the law stopped here, I’d be fine with it; not supportive, not hopeful about the likely outcomes, but fine nonetheless.

But the Nevada law, and a similar law passed in Illinois, goes further than that. They also impose regulations on AI developers, stating that it is illegal for them to explicitly or implicitly claim of their models that (quoting from the Nevada law):

(a) The artificial intelligence system is capable of providing professional mental or behavioral health care;

(b) A user of the artificial intelligence system may interact with any feature of the artificial intelligence system which simulates human conversation in order to obtain professional mental or behavioral health care; or

(c) The artificial intelligence system, or any component, feature, avatar or embodiment of the artificial intelligence system is a provider of mental or behavioral health care, a therapist, a clinical therapist, a counselor, a psychiatrist, a doctor or any other term commonly used to refer to a provider of professional mental health or behavioral health care.

First there is the fact that the law uses an extremely broad definition of AI that covers a huge swath of modern software. This means that it may become trickier to market older machine learning-based systems that have been used in the provision of mental healthcare, for instance in the detection psychological stress, dementia, intoxication, epilepsy, intellectual disability, or substance abuse (all conditions explicitly included in Nevada’s statutory definition of mental health).

But there is something deeper here, too. Nevada AB 406, and its similar companion in Illinois, deal with AI in mental healthcare by simply pretending it does not exist. “Sure, AI may be a useful tool for organizing information,” these legislators seem to be saying, “but only a human could ever do mental healthcare.”

And then there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans who use chatbots for something that resembles mental healthcare every day. Should those people be using language models in this way? If they cannot afford a therapist, is it better that they talk to a low-cost chatbot, or no one at all? Up to what point of mental distress? What should or could the developers of language models do to ensure that their products do the right thing in mental health-related contexts? What is the right thing to do?

The State of Nevada would prefer not to think about such issues. Instead, they want to deny that they are issues in the first place and instead insist that school employees and occupationally licensed human professionals are the only parties capable of providing mental healthcare services (I wonder what interest groups drove the passage of this law?).

Yikes!

I understand that impulse: “only a human could ever do mental healthcare.” Not so long ago I may have had that, or a similar, impulse. But I’ve been rethinking that impulse.

For one thing, as Ball notes, lots or Americans are already using chatbots in this way, whether or not their particular chatbot was designed for such use. A recent study reported that therapy/companionship is currently the top use of generative AI. That makes sense in view of the almost uncanny linguistic facility that state of the art chatbots have. One can easily treat one as a companion. In so doing it would be natural to talk about how you’re feeling and about your desires, hopes, and dreams. As the chatbot responds sympathetically you’ll inch toward therapeutic territory, and when you start asking for advice, also natural, you’ll be inching into therapeutic territory. Yes, you’re treating it as a friend, and that’s what one does with a friend, which is to say, we make therapeutic use of our friends. Humans have always done that. But it’s only relatively recently in human history that we’ve had mental heath therapists (late 19th century) and so it’s only recently that we could explicitly acknowledge the therapeutic value of friendship.

Moreover, last year I wrote an article for 3 Quarks Daily on AI and mental health: Melancholy and Growth: Toward a Mindcraft for an Emerging World. I’ve written a number of blog posts to accompany that article and I’ve packaged the article and some of those posts as a working paper: Melancholy, Growth, and Mindcraft: A Working Paper. The implication of that paper is that some kind of therapeutic is a natural use for AI and that, indeed, in the future people are likely to be living in a world where human activity is embedded in a matrix of AIs for various purposes, including mental health. Creating that technology is going to be tricky and difficult. It will require a lot of careful experimentation. Laws like Nevada’s will stop that before it’s even started.

We need to tread carefully here.

What’s the difference between life coaching and therapy? [Claude]

Once I began thinking about depression and its amelioration, I began thinking about therapy, but also life coaching. Why life coaching? Because it strikes me as being relatively new, on the one hand. Many people are being forced to change jobs because their current job has disappeared, either because it’s left the country (as steel-making largely has) or because it’s been rendered technologically obsolete. That’s a situation where life coaching might be called on, but also where depression seemed likely. So I asked Claude about life coaching.

As always, my prompts are in boldface, while Claude’s responses are plain.

* * * * *

Tell me about the profession of life coaching. When did it originate? What do life coaches do?

Life coaching emerged as a profession in the 1980s, growing out of the human potential movement and business consulting. Thomas Leonard, often considered the first modern life coach, founded Coach U in 1992 and the International Coach Federation (ICF) in 1994.

Life coaches help clients:

• Define and achieve personal/professional goals
• Navigate life transitions and decisions
• Develop action plans and accountability systems
• Identify limiting beliefs and overcome obstacles
• Improve relationships, careers, and work-life balance

Unlike therapists, life coaches don't treat mental health conditions or focus on past trauma. They work with mentally healthy individuals to create positive future outcomes. Coaches typically meet with clients weekly or monthly, either in person or virtually, for 30-60 minute sessions.

The field has grown significantly - the ICF reports over 53,000 members globally as of 2023. While certification isn't legally required, many coaches obtain credentials through organizations like ICF or the Coaches Training Institute to demonstrate professional standards.

Compare life coaching with psychotherapy.

Life coaching and psychotherapy differ in several key areas:

Focus:

• Therapy: Past experiences, trauma, mental health conditions, emotional healing
• Coaching: Future goals, action plans, personal growth, skill development

Qualifications:

• Therapists: Advanced degree, licensed, extensive clinical training
• Coaches: Varied backgrounds, optional certification, no universal requirements

Approach:

• Therapy: Diagnoses and treats mental health conditions, explores root causes
• Coaching: Works with mentally healthy clients, solution-focused, action-oriented

Relationship:

• Therapy: Clinical, bound by strict healthcare regulations
• Coaching: More informal, partnership-focused

Duration:

• Therapy: Often longer-term, addressing deep-seated issues
• Coaching: Usually shorter-term, focused on specific goals

Both professions maintain confidentiality and aim to help clients improve their lives, but operate under different frameworks and serve different needs.

Burnout Coaches

Martha C. White, Seeing Workplace Misery, Burnout Coaches Offer Company, New York Times, July 9, 2024.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted how and where people work, the World Health Organization recognized burnout. In 2019, it defined the hallmarks of this type of chronic workplace stress as exhaustion, cynicism and ineffectuality — all attributes that make it tough for people to bounce back on their own, said Michael P. Leiter, a professor emeritus at Acadia University in Nova Scotia who studies burnout.

“It’s hard, at that point, to pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” he said. “It’s really helpful to have a secondary point of view or some emotional support.”

Enter the burnout coach.

Operating in a gray area between psychotherapy and career coaching, and without formal credentialing and oversight, “burnout coach” can be an easy buzzword to advertise. Basically anybody can hang out a shingle.

As a result, more people are marketing themselves as burnout coaches in recent years, said Chris Bittinger, a clinical assistant professor of leadership and project management at Purdue University who studies burnout. “There’s no barrier to entry,” he said. [...]

This lack of oversight makes it difficult to say how many burnout coaches there are, but researchers who study burnout such as Mr. Leiter say a pressure-cooker corporate culture, a shortage of mental health care resources and the disruption of the pandemic have created a critical mass of burned-out workers searching for ways to cope. [...]

Interest in burnout coaches comes amid shifting views on workplace wellness. William Fleming, a fellow at Oxford University’s Wellbeing Research Center, found that many employer-provided wellness services, like sleep apps and mindfulness seminars, largely don’t live up to claims of improving mental health.

“Those interventions — not only are many of them not working, but they’re backfiring,” said Kandi Wiens, the co-director of the medical education master’s degree program at the University of Pennsylvania and a burnout researcher.

Mr. Fleming said these initiatives were ineffective because they focus on the individual rather than issues like overwork or lack of resources that lead to burnout.

Kids and Music 6: Get Aboard Henry Lau’s Freestyle Express [Born to Groove]

Let’s pick up where we left off with my previous post on Lau, Born to Groove, Kids and Music 3: Henry Lau has a good heart & knows how to work with kids [kawaii alert!]. We know he was born in Canada to Chinese parents and was headed for a career in classical music when SM Entertainment sent him to K-Pop stardom. Last year he started a series of videos in which he appeared with various young Korean musicians, Henry Together. My earlier post featured a young violinist, YoEun Seol. I also covered his work with Kwak Dakyung, a young jazz musician, at the end of my previous post in this series.

Henry worked with twelve musicians in the first season of Henry Together. Now we’re ready for a second season. But first...

Music Genius friends from Henry Together

Some of the musicians from the first season got together and did a collaborative performance of one of Henry’s songs, “Trust Your Face.” The music was arranged and the project coordinated by the guitarist, Sean Song.

Listen to how all the voices and instruments work and coordinate together.

Kids these days!

Now we’re ready for the first post of Season two, after which we’ll return to season one. It’s confusing, I know, but this isn’t about chronology.

Can We Do A Concert Through Zoom?

They’re all on screen chatting with Henry. Have they become a community? Henry suggests they get together and perform that tune that we’ve all heard a jillion times, “Canon in D.”

And so Henry leads them through putting an arrangement together. I don’t know whether or not it simply happened online Just Like That, or whether there’s been some behind the scenes work, and how much editing has been done. None of that really matters. What matters is that Henry is showing us that music doesn’t just fall from the sky. It has to be planned out and arranged.

So they give it a try (at about 3:32). Sounds a bit disorganized, no? Still, Henry is encouraging. They give it another try (about 4:24). They run through it, but we don’t hear most of it. They finish, Henry’s encouraging, but they all know better. After all, they are good musicians. They’re not fooled by this well-intended positivity. They work on things and we get the finished version, with Henry joining on violin (about 6:01).

Henry’s family having a little recital

Let’s leave Henry Together for a minute and see him with family and friends. His brother plays some stride (boogie-woogie), with Henry joining. His mother sits down at the piano, then his father.

Nine Year Old Piano Prodigy’s Fast Hands

Let's return to the first season of Henry Together. Henry meets young pianist, Seo Yul Shin in episode 6.

They chat. She tells Henry she’s ten “this year” (c. 2:04) and that she’s seen every episode of Henry Together. And she thinks that she’s a better pianist than Jichan (Episode 1). What does she want to eat? Chicken. He orders two fried chickens.

She says she was nervous in the car coming over, but not now. It’s cool “to see someone from TV sit right in front of me” (2:51). Ah, the melding of two worlds, TV world and the Real World. He brings in the chicken and they eat – as you may know by know, sharing a meal is part of Henry’s protocol for these meetings. And then, out of nowhere, she asks him his blood type (3:14): “Just the ideal type for a lot of people,” a remark she regards with well-justified bemusement. I'm sure many of Henry's fans want to know the answer to that question, but a ten-year old? Back to eating and more chit-chat. They talk about music lessons and stuff. “More cola?”

To music. She plays Chopin, Waltz No. 3, aka “Cat Waltz” (about 5:07). When she’s finished we hear off-screen clapping. Henry’s impressed. How does she react? “I made a lot of mistakes.” She may be a child, but you don’t get as good as she is without being rigorously self-critical.

Henry suggests that they play some Paganini together, remarking that eye contact is very important in collaboration (c. 7:13). After they’ve finished Henry gives the piano a glissando from the upper register down. She follows, doing it in the middle-to-lower register. “I’ve never tried scraping before.” “You’ve never done this? Try again. Mom’s not watching, right? Because my mom didn’t let me do this stuff either.” They play around until they get together on a gliss and a final note.

She starts playing a Piazolla tango (8:26). Henry joins in on violin (reading music laying on the piano), occasionally having intonation problems. I can’t really tell whether he’s sharp or flat, but he’s definitely a bit off here and there. But who cares? They’re getting acquainted. At the end she throws in a gliss to a high note.

Now Henry gets serious (at about 9:31). “Let’s just play what we feel.” She’s puzzled. He shows her, playing some arpeggios on the keyboard. She follows. “You’ve only been playing off the sheet music so far. Forget the sheet music for now. Today you just play what you feel. So far you practice a ton and you try to be perfect, but music is also about being free.” He works with her a little. She plays two hands. Henry joins in, one hand. They stop. Chat a bit. Start again, she’s on piano, he’s on violin. The video ends.

See what he’s going? Do you understand why I’ve entitled this post Henry Lau’s Freestyle Express?

Henry and Piano Prodigy Perform a New Song

Here’s their performance. They open with one of many sets of variations on something by Paganini – ending with that glissando she learned from Henry. Then Seo Yul Shin plays a solo (don’t recognize it, couldn’t make out the title on the screen), and another, Chopin’s “Cat Waltz.”

They conclude with the song they made up during their “getting to know you” phase (6:30). She decided to call it “Wind.”

Season One Reunion

Henry opened season two with a reunion of the musicians from the first season. Here it is almost without comment. Henry does say that he learned from his young prodigies, that they forced him to new music. Any reason to doubt him? No.

Coaching Bonus

Henry is doing a lot of coaching with these young musicians. I have two other posts involving coaching:

An interesting example of vocal coaching, Oct. 16, 2014, https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2014/10/an-interesting-example-of-vocal-coaching.html.

Ride the Lizard, Valkyrie, Ride It!, November 15, 2013, http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2013/11/music-ride-lizard-valkyrie-ride-it.html.

Kids and Music 5: Kwak DaKyung, Jazz Trumpeter [Born to Groove]

While I’m not sure it makes much sense to say that one musical instrument is more difficult to play than another, getting a sound out of, say, a violin or a piano is easy, while getting a sound out of a trumpet is difficult. Anyone can press keys on a piano keyboard; even kittens can do it, but did you ever hear a kitten play the trumpet? And while kittens don’t play violins, even very young children can do so. Thus you will find many videos on YouTube of young children playing the violin or piano, often astonishingly well. But you won’t hear many videos of young children playing the trumpet, at all.

Kwak Dakyung, a young Korean girl, is an exception. Here she is playing the trumpet at a very young age:

Notice that she rests her trumpet on a stand. In a year or two she won’t need the stand and her tone will improve.

Confirmation

It did. This video was uploaded on March 30, 2021. She’s fronting a jazz quartet playing Charlie Parker’s “Confirmation.”

Charlie Parker was one of the inventors of bebop, a jazz style that emerged in the early 1940s. It emphasized rhythmic complexity, angular melodic lines, and instrumental virtuosity.

Many regard “Confirmation” as one of Parker’s best original tunes. While it is based on a standard AABA harmonic foundation (each letter stands for eight bars of music), the melody is more complex, more like ABCA, where the final eight bars start out like the first eight, but the final four bars are different, both harmonically and melodically. The melody is complex – wide intervals, complex phrases – and thus is difficult to play smoothly.

Dakyung (her given name) plays the melody well; she has mastered its rhythmic complexity. She improvises well too. If you aren’t familiar with the tune, you might not even know when she starts improvising (at about 0:51). The repeated figures at 1:08 are nice, and she marks the bridge well (1:08). Notice the repeated figure she uses at the opening of the last eight (1:25). The way she opens her second chorus is brilliant (about 1:34). It is simple, obvious, and common to conclude one phase at the end of the chorus and then begin the next chorus with a new phrase. Dakyung does something much more interesting. She creates an ascending phrase in the last bar (of the first chorus) which reaches its apex at the beginning of the second chorus. It then starts down, in effect, becoming a new phrase. The initial phrase of the second chorus thus serves two function: 1) it continues a phrase from the previous chorus while 2) also initiating a new chorus.

I could go on, but I’ve made my point: she’s thinking about music in a sophisticated way.

Carnival of Venice

Her performance of “Carnival of Venice” is a different kettle of fish. Flashy? Yes. But the foundation isn’t quite there yet. She's young and hasn't had time to build up the endurance required to perform this.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

Back in the 19th century Niccolo Paganini, the famous violin virtuoso, took a simple folk tune and elaborated it with twenty variations, entitling the final composition “Il Carnevale Di Venezia.” The theme was then picked up by other instruments and provided with virtuoso accouterments and horseplay appropriate to each. A French cornet virtuoso named Jean-Baptiste Arban wrote a set of variations which he included in his method book, Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet, which is perhaps the core pedagogical book for ‘classical’ style trumpet and cornet.

Arban’s set of variations on “Carnival of Venice” has thus become a rite of passage for students of the trumpet. Accordingly, you will find many performances of it on YouTube. Some are by well-known virtuosi of the past and present – Sergei Nakariakov, Wynton Marsalis, Maurice André, and Timofei Dokshizer for example – while others are by relatively unknown professionals and advanced students. Some of these performances are better than others, but all of them are brilliant.

That’s the point of the piece, brilliance. But interesting music it is not. “Confirmation,” for example, with its rapid chord changes, complex melody, and off-kilter rhythms, is much more interesting. “Carnival of Venice” is a virtuoso display piece in which the soloist goes a few rounds with Mike Tyson, tight-rope walks over Niagara Falls, rescues a young child from an out-of-control Tesla on full-automatic, leaps tall buildings with a single bound, and threads a needle with a drunken sailor.

That’s the musical mosh pit Kwak Dakyung entered when she performed Arban’s “Carnival of Venice” when ten years old. This was uploaded on December 4, 2019:

Impressive? Yes, alas, for a child.

I began getting worried at about 2:56; the tempo seemed a little slow, not quite up to the mosh pit standard. My worries increased at about 3:52; we’re still a little slow, and this variation involves wide interval leaps from the middle to the lower register, which are difficult. The bottom notes were there, but not speaking loudly enough. At 4:10 we have the first displays of double-tonguing – don’t worry about just what that is; it’s difficult and you put points on the board if you do it well. (But I never heard Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker’s brother in bebop, double tongue. If Dizzy doesn’t qualify as a trumpet virtuoso, the term has no meaning.) And then, whoops!, at about 4:45 some notes don’t speak at all. It passes quickly and you probably wouldn’t notice if you weren’t intimately familiar with this music. Then at 4:49, another flubbed passage, but it passes quickly. And so it goes.

Let’s skip to the very end. She’s finishing a variation that punctuates rapid twiddley figures in the middle register with rapid wide-interval leaps into the bottom register. Those leaps burn your chops and tax your air supply. They are exhausting, especially coming at the end of a long and taxing blow. This is the point where you act like you could keep playing for hours no sweat! if it weren’t for the fact that the stage hands would have to be paid double-overtime, which would break the budget. Of course you can’t actually do that. You’re almost dead. But you’ve got to put on a show. And she’s not quite up to it. She’s exhausted. You can hear her reach for breaths (c. 9:24 and after) and her tongue staggers just a bit at the end. 

Here's the point: Minor faults like those would be of little consequence in a jazz improvisation where everything else is fine, the rhythm is sure and the melodic line is fluid. In that context technique is subordinate to imagination and soulfulness. In a piece like “Carnival of Venice,” however, technical brilliance is the focus of the piece, its reason for being. In this context even minor technical flaws undermine the performance.

There’s no doubt in my mind that in a couple of years she will be able to paint the town red with her technical brilliance. But she might have more fun working on the repertoire that the great Rafael Mendez left behind. The sheet music is readily available and there are plenty of Mendez clips on YouTube – I don’t know about availability on CD, much less vinyl. The music is full of technical challenges and, best of all, it’s real music, not stunt music. Mendez’s repertoire will help her develop her musicality, not just her technique.

Back to jazz. 

[See the coda at the end for a different performance of “Carnival of Venice”.]

All the Things You Are

“All the Things You Are” is a show tune from 1939 that quickly became a favorite of jazz musicians because it puts some interesting twists on the standard 32-bar AABA form. Once again DaKyung fronts a quartet. This performance was uploaded on April 15, 2021:

I won’t belabor this performance with long commentary, but I would like to note the transition into her second improvised chorus, starting at about 1:34. It’s a sequence of 4-note arpeggios followed by a short descending figure that lands her exactly on the first note of her second improvised chorus as 1:40. I don’t know whether she worked it out in advance or just hit upon it in process – both are possible – but it is very clever. She was clearly anticipating that transition. She closes out the second chorus with some nice runs at about 2:17 and after. After the piano solo, starting at 5:06, she leads the group in trading phrases with the drummer before the final chorus. Notice that the piano player tosses in a line based on “Fly Me to the Moon,” one of DaKyung’s favorite tunes.

She’s not just running through the chord changes in a quasi-mechanical way. She’s a very thoughtful musician.

Born to Groove, Kids and Music 3: Henry Lau has a good heart & knows how to work with kids [kawaii alert!]

Who is Henry Lau? His mother is from Taiwan and his father is from Hong King. Henry, as he is generally known, was born in 1989 and raised in Toronto. He plays violin, piano, and guitar and planned on a career as a classical violinist but then SM Entertainment, a Korean firm, recruited him in 2006. He was on his way to K-pop stardom, and more. He left SM in 2018 and started his own studio.

Starting in the spring of 2020 Henry released a series of videos on YouTube under the rubric “Henry Together.” The first video in the series shows how he got the idea. The videos come in pairs. In each pair he teams up with a talented young musician. The first video in each pair shows them getting acquainted. They share a meal, chat, and play around getting to know one another’s musical skills. In the second video they present a little concert, a “collabo” as they call it.

I’ve watched some of them, but not all. Here’s a pair he did with a young violinist, YoEun Seol. She started playing when she was two years and eight months old and is now nine. Here’s their first video, the “getting to know you” one.

Notice that he eases us into things. We see him finding her YouTube channel, and then a series of snippets following her progress from three to about six. And then she comes peeking in through a window and he invites her in, violin case strapped to her back. Obviously some things were worked out ahead of time, but their interaction doesn’t seem scripted, though what we see has obviously been edited from more extensive footage. They chat a bit and he offers her a meal (c. 2:00).

He asks if she’s seen him on TV. Nope, don’t have a TV. But she has seen him play the violin. Asks her who’s better. She smiles, hesitates, laughs, declines to answer. Henry leans back.

Think about what just happened.

She knows that she’s better. But he’s an adult and a musician; she’s reluctant – to tell him the truth? to hurt his feelings? But he accepts her judgment. And she plays some Paganini while he’s suitably impressed. They’re cool.

See how this goes? Food (c. 3:00). He fixes some noodles for her. “They’re very nice and chewy.” Then: “Do you work at this restaurant?” “Yes, so if you’re ever hungry, just come here and ask for me, okay?” “Yes.”

The violin comes out, she tunes (c. 4:17). “How do you know that’s the right tune” “I know by ear.” “No way.” She has perfect pitch; Henry’s suitably impressed. She plays Paganini; Henry’s suitably impressed. Now he gets his violin out; she offers to help him tune (c. 7:16). They trade phrases from Paganini. See how this is going? They continue with dueling fiddles. Guess which one gives up? It’s not the nine-year old. Henry strums the violin like a guitar. YoEun smiles and laughs.

He switches to piano (c. 9:34). She suggests that she’ll play the accompaniment, “three-four time.” They make something up. Together. They play a tune from Frozen. Then “My Favorite Things.” YoEun: “And then, next, go to major.” “Yes, mam.” He gets out his violin and they play “My Favorite Things” together; Henry works out a harmony line.

All of this obvious in the video. You don’t need me to spell it out. I do it, though, because it helps me think about what’s going on, and it creates a verbal record of their playfulness. They’re playing – adult and child – not merely in the sense of playing music, but in the deeper sense of having fun, playing with one another, while also making music. They really are in this together. And we, the audience, get to see music as it is being made, not merely as a finished and polished performance.

In this next video we see them performing together. I’ll present this without comment beyond pointing out how fully YoEun is present during her playing. Watch her move. Had me laughing several times it was so much fun.

Notice that they start with the technically difficult, and therefor showy, showpiece and then they play three songs. Why?

Judging from what I’ve seen of the other video pairs, that’s how it goes with each kid:

Getting to know you.
Let’s make music.
Together.

* * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * *

Born to Groove, Kids and Music 2: Prodigies R’ Us

Born to Groove, Kids and Music 1: Three Examples

An interesting example of vocal coaching

As you watch, think about  what the coach is telling the student and how she responds. When he tells her to sing from her toes, think about that, and empathize. Feel it in your toes. How could THAT change the way you sing? What's going on with the mind/body?

The video's roughly nine minutes long and worth watching:

Here's a post from last year where I talk about a video of a trombone master class. The coach is helping the student give a more convincing performance of a trombone part from Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyrie."

Solitaire (in Retirement)

The New York Times just ran a piece on retirement coaches, professionals who help retirees figure out what to do with their lives now that they don't have work to take up their time. Their example retirees are chosen from among professionals who, we assume, had satisfying careers. But what about them men and women who just worked fort a paycheck? 

One issue, of course, is relating to other people. Work gives you a circle of people who interact with day in and day out. When you're retired, that's gone, especially if you move away. But there's another problem; it has to do with what I've been calling behavioral mode. Work requires and supports a certain ecology of tasks, an economy of attention. You train your mind to it – though you might want to think of breaking a horse to saddle. When the job's gone, that economy is rendered useless. But you've devoted so much time to it that you don't know how else to deploy your behavioral resources.

And so you sit and twiddle your thumbs. Or, as in my father's case, play solitaire. I'm republishing the following note from April 15, 2011.

* * * * *

One scene that’s etched deeply in my mind is what I saw the first time I visited my parents after my father had retired. My father was playing solitaire hour after hour, day by day. Reveal a card, look at the table, place the card on the table. Reveal a card, look at the table, place the card on the table. Reveal a card, look at the table, place the card on the table. Reveal a card, look at the table, place the card on the table. Repeat.

Why? Why play solitaire when his time was his own? Who stole his life that he no longer had it?
 

My father was a brilliant man with many interests. We was a superb craftsman. He made my sister a play-pen for her dolls. He made if from wood, and made it so you could fold it up, just like real playpens. It was, oh, 30 to 36 inches square when opened up. The real marvel was that he’d cut the letters of the alphabet, and the numerals 0-9, into the slats on the sides. He outlined each letter on the slat. Drilled a hole inside the letter. Put the blade of a coping saw through the hole and then reattached the blade to the saw frame. Then stroke by stroke he sawed out the letter or number. When that was done he used small pieces of sandpaper to finish the edges.

Now, I didn’t actually see him do that, or, if I did, I don’t remember it. But that’s pretty much how he would have done it. Just which coping saw he used – he had several – I don’t know.

But that’s only one of many things he built down in his workshop with more tools than he had time to use.

He collected stamps, thousands upon thousands of them. The sale of his collection (after he’d died) was a minor event in the stamp-collecting world.

He played golf, a game he loved deeply. He like music, liked to read, and was a good bridge player.

But when he had his time back, when he didn’t have to go into work five days a week, he filled these blocks of time with solitaire. Not with those other things he used to do only on evenings and weekends.

In time, over the months and, yes, years, he cut back on the solitaire. He never did much, if any, wood working; the tools in his shop lay dormant. He played more golf, spent more time with his stamp collection. And bought some records.

The solitaire never left him. Always the well-worn decks of cards. Hours and hours.

Why?

Music: Ride the Lizard, Valkyrie, Ride It!

Years ago, when I was working as a program assistant in the Chaplain’s Office at Johns Hopkins, we got word that a new gospel singer was in town. Would we audition her, see if we wanted to sponsor her in performance? The Chaplain passed that job to me.

So I arranged an audition. At the appointed time she arrived at Hopkins with her. She changed into performance dress – a billowing white gown – and took her place near the piano. Her accompanist started, she joined in, and seconds later I had made my decision. That is to say, I made my decision before she finished her first selection. I felt no need to hear more.

I really don't recall just how long it took me to decide. Let's say it was 30 seconds – though it might have been a little less, or somewhat more, but not much more. Of that time, I figure most of it was taken up by my left-brain figuring out what my right-brain had decided after, say, only 5 or 10 seconds.

What was it that I had decided so very quickly? That she was a VERY musical woman. Nothing more, and certainly, certainly nothing less. That is, I had assigned her to a very high level of competence, and that was all I needed to know in order to recommend that we present her – which we did. Just where she was within that upper league was irrelevant to my purpose. And, I suspect, that if I hadn't placed her in that league so quickly, I would have had her audition longer. She might have put herself in that league later on, and she might not have. If not, then I may well have had a much more difficult decision to make.

But what, you ask, has that to do with lizards and Valkyries?

The Valkyries are in this clip, a segment from a master class in which player Thomas Leyendecker, principal trombone with the Berlin Philharmonic, coaches Carson King-Fournier on Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.

King-Fournier is the one who plays first. He’s an excellent player, but his playing lacks “guts” and “soul”. Leyendecker tells him that in those terms, but that’s what he’s getting at. There’s the notes, the music, and the deep music, the soul. You don’t get into a master class like this unless you’ve got the notes and music down cold. This coaching is about soul.