Practicing with Berlioz

Hello there, nice people! I'm new on here, also not an English-speaker, hope I'm not breaking any rules of the forum (and of grammar, for that matter :). 

Started music college 2 years ago, don't have any previous *advanced* music training. Major — vocals (jazz, pop); + I got piano 101, music literature, arrangement, music theory, solfeggio, the usual. However, my real desire is to write orchestral music, like Tchaikowsky... but with lyrics. 

Right now I'm struggling with basic problems — bad sightreading, bad understanding of instrumentation, rhythm, difficult notation, of theory, not that great of an ear. Not being able to play any of the instruments properly (I've just taken up violin and cello, can play guitar — poorly). But I'm working on all of it. My trouble is mostly with instrumentation and orchestration. 

I found a way that I would prefer to practice them — via Berlioz's famous Treatise. 

I read chapters, took notes and analysed the perfect examples that Hector'd put there. Then I asked chatgpt/deepseek/grok to come up with musescore exercises for me to better understand each of the topics, so that I could get used to actual notes, rhythms, harmonies, not just DAWs. Then I realised AI can't read or hear notes properly... In any format. It just fantasises about what key, tempo it could be, but doesn't really see musescore, pdf, jpg or mp3. In my turn, I can't rely on my own perception of the "works" (yeah, like 8 bars in pizz. for strings).

So, do you have suggestions as to how I can comfortably carry on studying with that great book? Maybe a better AI thing? Or a format I hadn't thought of? Maybe hints on how I can review/check my own practice "through the eyes of a pro", some solid points? 

Anyway, I really don't want to bother people that are actually good at composing with my extra-amateur 8-bar exercices, I liked the idea of anonymity with that AI thing... Too bad that it doesn't have ears or eyes, too! 

Thanks for the attention, have a great day! 

Hello @schedevrant and welcome to the forum!

4 hours ago, schedevrant said:

I read chapters, took notes and analysed the perfect examples that Hector'd put there. Then I asked chatgpt/deepseek/grok to come up with musescore exercises for me to better understand each of the topics, so that I could get used to actual notes, rhythms, harmonies, not just DAWs. Then I realised AI can't read or hear notes properly... In any format. It just fantasises about what key, tempo it could be, but doesn't really see musescore, pdf, jpg or mp3. In my turn, I can't rely on my own perception of the "works" (yeah, like 8 bars in pizz. for strings).

I am not too familiar with chatgpt, deepseek, or grok or any other AI tools for that matter.. but the owner of this forum @chopin is developing a notation software called Music Jotter that is able to take data generated by AI tools and create music.  He's showed off the capabilities of AI tools and Music Jotter and what they can do on his YouTube channel - Can ChatGPT compose like Chopin?  From what I understand, since ChatGPT and Gemini can understand midi data you feed it and output midi data - you can import it into notation programs and see the notes etc.  That's just my understanding of the AI capabilities though.  Can you maybe talk more about the difficulties you encountered in realising midi data output from AI tools and opening them in Musescore or other notation programs?  They can export their files as midi even if PDF, jpg or mp3 isn't a format that ChatGPT understands, right?

And thanks for asking!  I'm sure many people will find this topic useful.  And hopefully some of what I said will be helpful!

@PeterthePapercomPoser hey! Thank you for the reply.
I've watched the video, it's great and I'm looking forward to using apps of that sort to help create... such a good idea!

With AI(s), however, as far as I know, the only way they are able to understand music is if you provide it described in words, like in the video, each touch and each little detail (then it imagines what it would look like in music form, but the notes themselves leave it overwhelmed). It doesn't see midi (at least from what I've tried) or any other format. And rewriting everything in word form seems  like it would be tiring, especially in the future, where the exercises get more complex.

Even though my application is still under development, the idea is that Music Jotter can translate the AI text notation from ChatGPT or Gemini to actual notes. This saves the end user the pain of having to notate the AI's response output manually. As far as I know, there are no other tools that can do this at the moment. So you literally are at the only place that can give you somewhat of what you are asking for. The problem, is that ChatGPT and Gemini are not trained on classical music, they are all purpose llms. I would love nothing more than to develop my own llm down the line, and train it on Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven, and other music, but hey, maybe if I can convince some AI investors down the line that we need this technology, this can be doable! But as of this moment, you can describe music and get textual output (even fun chord progressions!), where Music Jotter will convert that textual output into playback sheet music. My latest 2 videos on my channel are dedicated to this.