The Universal Language of Music: A Conversation with Stephen Ridley – Part 2
“And then his youngest daughter, who’s six years old, comes up, and she’s into gymnastics and she’s kind of cartwheeling around the room while everyone else is playing. And then, ‘All right, she’s going to play you a song.’ And she comes up, and she’s all full of beans, and then she sits down and she plays the most somber Debussy song. And it was, like, there was so much soul in what she played for a six-year-old. I’m like, ‘whoa!’ Like, the amount of depth in what she did was, like, whoa! ‘You are, like, a wise young girl.’ That’s an old soul. And I looked at him, and he’s crying. And then at the end of this evening, we again get to talking about AI, and he was asking, this comes full circle, this is the reason I bring this story up, is he’s invested heavily in various different AI projects. And one of them is this company that’s gonna be, like, a prompt and then it makes music. And he said, ‘Well, you know it’s cool, but are you not worried about AI, like, taking you out?’ And I was like, ‘Well, do you think I should be? You probably know better than me.’ And he said, ‘Well, you know, AI can do exactly what she just did, just so you know, like right now, I could get AI to play that song and it can play it perfectly.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, but would it make you cry?’” – Stephen Ridley
This is the 300th episode of Audio Branding: The Hidden Gem of Marketing, and my conversation with international pianist and founder of the Ridley Academy, Stephen Ridley, continues in “The Universal Language of Music” as we discuss why Stephen prefers live performances to studio recordings, the school he’s now running to help others find their own passion for music, and the one song he’s vowed to never play on the piano.
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(0:00:01) – The Future of Creativity and AI
The second half of our conversation picks up with Stephen’s illuminating discussion of AI with a billionaire tech investor, and where he sees AI leading us in the future. “There are a lot of things in life where we don’t necessarily need to put ourselves into it,” he explains. “They don’t require our imagination, creativity, any spiritual anything. Those things probably can be replaced by AI.” We discuss AI’s limitations as a way of conveying emotion, and where the new economy might lead us once machines are handling the busy work. “I actually think the future economy will be heavily into creativity, and into art,” Stephen adds, “since I think that’s exactly where culture will go.”
(0:07:16) – The Unique Power of Live Entertainment
Stephen recalls his brief and unexpected foray into iTunes after discovering that a record label had uploaded his music without permission. “They’re like, ‘Okay, if you don’t like it, sue us.’ And obviously I wasn’t in a position to do that, and they have all the money in the world,” he explains. “So I was like, ‘Okay, well, I can’t do that, but what I can do is remove it. So I just removed it.” He talks about why, even though he’s starting to return to social media and streaming content, he still prefers live concert performances to being in a studio. “I don’t have the pressure of having to record it six hundred times, get it perfect, mix it, master it, spend a hundred thousand dollars,” he tells us. “I write a song, I go up on the stage, I play it…. And because of that, my shows have grown and grown and grown.”
(0:13:39) – Revolutionizing Music Education With Fun
He tells us about the piano school he’s recently opened, and how his own path as a musician inspired him to help others find a different way. “It was fun when I was first noodling,” he says. “Then I went to get educated and all it made me want to do is quit piano. And I suffer through years and years and years and years of hours and hours of practicing a day, and then I get to enjoy music.” We discuss some of the weaknesses of traditional music lessons, and how he’s working to spark the sense of wonder he finds in music within students who might have been put off by those early lessons. “They leave this experience feeling like they’re no good at music,” he tells us. “But in actual fact, what I thought is ‘Well, no, I just think the education sucks if everybody’s having the same experience.’”
(0:22:49) – Music’s Impact on Health and Longevity
As our discussion comes to a close, we talk about the latest research into music’s medical benefits, from boosting memory and agility in elderly patients to lowering cortisol and stress levels in people of all ages. “Cortisol is a stress hormone,” he says. “You might not know that you’re stressed until you remove the stress, and so, uh, they’d universally found that playing piano for just thirty minutes could reduce cortisol.” Our conversation touches on what such research might mean for the next generation of listeners, and the difference it might have made in his own life. “I’m sure if he’d had the outlet of music from a young age,” Stephen says about his father, who passed away from heart failure, “and he’d had a creative way to get that out rather than a destructive one, then he might have found himself later in life in a better physical condition. He might not have died when he did.”
Episode Summary
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The closing gap between musicians and audio AI, and what sets human music apart.
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The challenges the modern streaming-first music industry poses for young artists.
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Stephen’s work founding an innovative new piano school in the aftermath of COVID.
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The health benefits of sound, and the one song Stephen won’t play on the piano.
Connect with the Guest
Website: https://www.stephenridleypiano.com/
Ridley Academy: https://RidleyAcademy.com/
Follow Stephen Ridley on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephenridley/
Subscribe to Stephen Ridley on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrstephenridley/
Want to Live Longer? Play the Piano!: https://substack.com/inbox/post/159798783/
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This interview episode was very skillfully made to sound beautiful by the talented Humberto Franco.
** Transcript available upon request
