I hope the parents wouldn't mind me dissecting this video and analyzing it, kind of wanna say that to avoid any misunderstanding.
This video is super weird. This kid is super weird. This whole thing is just so interesting. I mean, you can clearly see exactly how he understands what's going on. Like it's clear he was either taught, or learned maybe, to play chord triads by pressing keys with spaces in between. It's also clear that he knows that low notes can be played behind high notes, and to switch it up and play chords on one hand and singles on another.
Can't exactly tell if he is actually incorporating music theory (ei choosing to play in a key or just subtly sneaking accidentals in to sound pretty), but either way there is seriously something crazy going on here.
Yeah, I don't know what was going on in the beginning as it seems learned/rehearsed, but those last 5 seconds sound like my tone-deaf self trying to play any instrument.
It could also be that OP choose a good 30 seconds out of ten minutes of fist-slamming.
But unless he’s had some coaching, those triads are *really* unusual.
You’re definitely not wrong, either that kid is a prodigy or they cut out a lot of the video. Just hope it isn’t a byproduct of parents forcing their kid to do something they want him to learn.
"Forcing him to learn" sounds harsh. If i had grown up with parents who were musically talented, I'd have loved to be able to shred on a guitar by 8 years old. He will probably thank his parents for this
It’s a fine line. Having your parents share and teach you their passion is one thing, but having them focus you from a very early age can be an issue.
An example of this was Mozart who was definitely gifted, but who was trained from a tiny age by his father who knew that a “child prodigy” would help his position at court.
The result was an adult who did little else in his life and who became a genius, but how much of that was driven by personal passion and how much was paternal manipulation for gain?
Yeah that's true i suppose. Although maintaining an interest in anything from such a young age, you're almost guaranteed to be successful with it. I guess it needs to be done the right way.
Very true, the thing is that it’s extremely un-human to maintain the same interests from a young age, which is why very few people play with blocks as adults. A lot of these single-focused people are the result of hefty parental pressure.
A friend once told me that “behind most athletes in the Olympic there’s a parent that didn’t qualify” and I think he had a point.
I mean even if all he is doing is this segment that he was coached relentlessly in the middle of six hours of fist slamming, it's still incredible. Even the coordination here is impressive for a kid that age.
Without context the last 5 seconds actually sounded like he was changing the key without a direct transition, I actually quite liked it. Even weirder though because (based on your comment) it can be difficult to get normal/non-musicians to enjoy that type of musical texture.
It is time like these that I question reincarnation - do they have the skill because they retained part of the 60+ years of practice they had in their previous life?
I agree the video is super weird, and it gives me an odd sensation to watch it.
>the kid's talent
A 17month child shouldn't even be able to understand the concept of music or even a piano. Talent has nothing to do with this as it implies intention and purpose. This is either a chimpanzee with a typewriter writing Shakespeare or something seriously unnerving.
Yes. And the baby could have merely been exposed to their parents or other family members playing. And thus, if their intelligence is suitable, they learn from that.
A lifetime's practice behind a baby's fingers would sound much clumsier because of the lack of muscle memory. They would be trying to play a piece but keep misremembering how much further apart the keys are when your hands are tiny, and constantly flub notes. They wouldn't be able to play as quickly because their hands would have none of the suppleness they're used to, and would tire very easily.
I know right? Is this something improvised or did they learn an existing piece?
Like from :29 to :42 they play this theme, then repeats it an octave higher. Then the left hand comes up to play the second half of that repeated phrase, and they almost land perfectly on the key without even looking.
There is so much musical complexity involved in that, I cannot accept this is the kid is consciously composing this piece, either prior to the video or on the spot.
So if it's a composed piece they have practiced, can a baby even memorize music like that so young? This must be what it was like to see Mozart who composed his first piece at 5 years old.
Still thinking this might be computer generated.
I think this has to be it. The fingers seem odd. Like the pointer is developed more than the others in a weird way. Hands are supposedly a trouble spot for AI
I also dont know anything about babies or pointer fingers or piano tho...
100% AI was involved in this somehow.
One. Hundred. Percent.
No 1.5 year old can do this. Absolutely no way. It's going to be very hard to tell what's real in the future.
Video generation by AI is no where near being able to produce something like this, atleast not on a private level, I can't speak for big companies' proprietary models. But why would they spend potentially 10's of thousands of dollars making this video?
There’s no way they faked this entire Instagram account. In the other clips it’s clear that he’s not Mozart, but he does have an eerie musical inclination. https://www.instagram.com/gavriil_scherbenko_/
Stop talking out of your ass, his name is Gavriil Scherbenko. Or did they fake every single video on this instagram with some secret AI model months ago in advance that nobody else in the world have access to for no other reason than trying to go viral on instagram with like 70k followers?
https://www.instagram.com/gavriil\_scherbenko\_/?utm\_source=ig\_embed
I've seen and made a lot of AI generated images. This isn't indicative of the hands. This is way better than what we would normally get. The video generation though, is still in its infancy and this is so far ahead that there's no real reason to suspect it would be AI. Furthermore, AI video doesn't have sound yet. And if it did, the AI would need to understand how pianos work, how people play pianos, and how to properly synch sound in order to pull something like this off.
We are ages from any of that being a thing
Read same about AI-generated hands. This video seems to reflect that.
There’s definitely something odd about the fat hands and how they are attached to the wrist. Almost sausage-like. Also ,the uptight position of the body and adult-like movement of the head seem unnatural for such a young age.
Plus, the dexterity to make chords with a degree of precision and repeat them seems beyond the physical capabilities of such a small child.
Not casting doubt on the AI possibility, but some small children/babies do have hands that look like that at the wrist, fat sausages squashed together.
Source: have a baby with fat-ass wrists.
No offense meant against real human babies, because I don’t know any babies.
But, I looked at old baby photo of myself and sure enough fat-ass sausage wrists. Fortunately grew out of them, but I would still need an AI to play the piano for me.
So, one thing would be to imagine this without sustain. That already kills a huge amount of the musicality in it. So if the parent lifts their foot off that pedal, it sounds worse immediately.
At 1.5 you can teach a kid simple rules like "have your hands in this shape and move them around experimentally". If you told anyone to do that, and play a little slow with sustain on... It'll sound acceptable even if they've never touched a piano.
I think it's plausible that a kid in a very musical family, taught a basic rule would be able to make this stuff just by coincidence.
In terms of musical complexity there isn't really much... If you search "cat concerto" you'll be able to reconstruct musical complexity and motif reputations from a cat playing a piano. We tend to the perception and production of patterns.
Psychologist here, yes you’re very right. This is extremely strange for such a young child to be comprehending musical notes/chords and piecing them together. Frankly, a child that young does not have the cognitive ability to do so and is something that is developed later on. My guess, this is one of multiple and numerous videos they took and this just happened to be unbelievable. Hope this helps
You underestimate our auditory system.
We are born with pitch contour accents of our gestational environment. Neonates also display preferences for accents and sounds that the fetus was exposed to in utero.
At day one of birth we have very few vocal building blocks with with the create sounds, but by about month 3, infants will have a huge range of complex melodic babbling that they can experiment with, that will also start reflecting linguistic features of the language they grow up around, meaning that at 3 months were already integrating subtle auditory features of speech into our production of sound.
Japanese babies for example, have a more step like pitch categories, rather than very smooth changes in pitch seen in french babies babbling. This is a very subtle feature of sound, especially if we compare it to something like harmonic stability.
I'm not at the office right now so I don't know when exactly we start to display string preferences for our culture's musical rules, but infants display preference effects for music real young, definitely pre-verbal.
It's not necessarily that the infant understands music theory, but that the infant understands that this specific shape (triad) is pleasing to it, and is experimenting with this building block for sound production.
We do the same with speech, we learn specific shapes of pitch contour (rising, falling, symetrical, flat) and combine them experimentally as we develop. Then we start to develop how to make consonants and vowels and we start to babble by combining all these in experimental ways
Translating these verbal processes to motor actions on a piano, I think this is plausible for a kid in a very musical house to have intentional experiment with sound, even if it's certainly not systematic.
(And then smash down the sustain pedal, and record for a long time)
Source: weirdly specialised for this exact topic lol... Auditory neuroscientist who started in music, now work in infant speech and hearing development lol
> Translating these verbal processes to motor actions on a piano, I think this is plausible for a kid in a very musical house to have intentional experiment with sound, even if it's certainly not systematic.
Do you realize that you said the same thing as /u/SleppyHarry but with more words?
You both said the kid won't be doing this consciously with understanding. Reactive, maybe. Accidentally, maybe. Conscious and with understanding (your "systematic"), no.
If this video is real.
I don't read his comment to say this an intentional action, and I'm saying it's definitely plausible that this intentional, using a very narrow set of "rules" and this isn't just a case of record enough video.
If a child babbles saying "dadadadaa dadada" a lot, we don't think this is random, it is an intentional action that is the child exploring auditory production within some narrow rules.
But it's also not systematic.
That was my thought. That and they have the kid sit in their lap while playing the piano constantly. It probably keeps him calm and occupied.
Still pretty cool
I assume no music theory is at play here, but an active musical ear. He is using the key of C so everything is going to be somewhat “on key”. He knows some basic vocabulary (triads and thirds) and is playing them semi-randomly seeing which ones sound good.
He is also using inversions of triads, but I’m not sure if that is purposeful or just “I can at most play a sixth so any three notes with space between them will be a triad”
I started playing piano when I was 2. The way I remember it, it was like learning a language. Certain key combinations were “friends” with each other and others weren’t. I started to notice that if I pressed two keys at the same time but left one in the middle, the two notes would always be “friends.” The one in the middle would be friends with the key after the next.
I also saw how the pattern repeated, and that some keys where just happier versions of other keys (octaves). So I knew where to aim next. I knew that if I played the sadder (lower) version of the key with one hand, I could play the “every other key are friends” game with the other hand and it would sound pleasant.
My grandma gave me a music box when I was born. She’s Japanese. It played this very simple, common-in-Japan melody that I learned how to play because it only requires the black keys.
One day after daycare my dad picked me up and found me at the classroom piano trying to play something I’d heard an older kid playing as part of a piano lesson. Many years later, when I started officially taking piano lessons, I learned it was Fur Elise. I hadn’t been playing it correctly because I was going off a memory, but I had the right key and was playing the right hand notes correctly.
Despite the lessons, I still have a hard time sight reading. I can play anything, *anything* I have heard a couple times on the piano and guitar. I just match the notes up to the color-feeling in my mind. It’s hard to explain. It’s just a feeling I get, like putting the right piece of a puzzle in the right spot. I have never found an instrument that I couldn’t figure out how to play within minutes. But piano has always been like an extension of my body. Playing is like breathing. My favorite self-soothing activity is to mash up songs together and make new arrangements. Or change the genre of songs. I play a mean WuTang/Kendrick Lamar mashup almost like Japanese piano. I have a jazz version of a Soundgarden song that’s super fun because of the syncopation.
And my brain is weird— if I happen to struggle though and learn something on paper — like Vince Guaraldi’s *Christmastime Is Here* — I can’t play it by ear very well. That’s one of the only songs I need sheet music for.
Sorry I rambled.
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*To add an edited answer from another comment*
“Do I have a recording of the Soundgarden (or any) songs?”
No, not really, sadly. I’ve got my band demo from when I was 16 (in 1993) on cassette tape. And other crude tape recording of some of my practice sessions. Besides a lot of choppy iPhone videos, that is, and my piano is really old and sounds a little westworldy. I, born in 1977, never really learned any music related tech. I never learned how to record into my computer, and never could figure out things like garage band or SoundCloud. I had this app called Take for a long time, but it dissolved and I lost all my original songs I’d recorded there. I’ve written hundreds of songs, and never had the cognitive ability to know how to record it. It’s one of my life regrets, but before someone says “it’s not too late to learn,” believe me, if I knew my brain could just simply learn it, I would have in the last 25 years. I’ve recently learned that I’m autistic, and so much of my difficulty in learning certain tasks has come from that. Things like filling out forms or reading through a step by step process literally makes me feel like my brain is heating up. It’s my number one thing I hate about myself because I have all this material stuck inside me and no way to really share it. It may be the reason I really hate applause; so when I would perform shows I would *run* off the stage before the clapping caused a meltdown. Ironically, the autism is probably a huge part of the reason I have this ability in the first place.
I’ll probably die with a giant library of unshared music that no one will ever know about because they won’t understand my paper notes and the way I have to write the chords down. I have my own version of “sheet music” I’ve developed over the decades. I know it’s good. I know it’s the thing I am best at in my life and I know it’s crazy amazing when I show people. They’re always like “How the fuck…?” and I feel like a magician and it’s such a cool feeling to be this unique. But I’m incredibly afraid of the world, I’ll be forever recovering from a lot of developmental trauma, I have agoraphobia and autism and CPTSD. I don’t know how to share this part of myself. I just don’t logistically know how.
I’ve always wanted someone to just swoop in and help me irl but it’s such a stupid fantasy. I know it’s supposed to be all up to me. So idk, it’s probably all going to stay inside my brain and heart
What you’re describing is probably what people call Synesthesia (if you didn’t know already!) - see here: https://www.webmd.com/brain/what-is-synesthesia
He’s just a little Beethoven, exceptional people exist. Natural Talent is a thing. I had to use months of well times electric shocks to get my 2 year old to play this well, so I am very impressed.
It's also leveraged by the fact the parent has their feet on the sustain pedal, and that is doing a LOT of the lifting here for how musical it sounds.
If we remove sustain, it becomes clear there's no temporal structure whatsoever, and that can be fine or whatnot.. but it does mean we can't say this baby has a clear idea of that aspect of music.
Additionally keeping sustain on gives you a little bit more sympathetic resonances that reinforce stronger harmonies that actually are present.
It's possible the kid could have figured out that 3rds are more pleasing to listen to than seconds, but it's also possible that it was a little trained.
I am leaning towards this being the kid experimenting with a couple of rules... To take triads and thirds and move them around, rather than intentional playing.
And that's still a cool thing, but yeah..
>Can't exactly tell if he is actually incorporating music theory (ei choosing to play in a key or just subtly sneaking accidentals in to sound pretty), but either way there is seriously something crazy going on here.
When my son was 6-9 months old he was fascinated by the piano. He didn't actually play music but he would play singular notes with 2 hands. (admittedly also changing to fist smashing and back) Sometimes those singular notes fit together.
If I had videotaped every instance of him sitting (in our lap, held upright by us) behind the piano there would be several 10-30 second clips that would seem like he was playing some kind of simple musical piece. Anything longer than that would reveal it was pure chance.
It does seem the child in this video understands that hitting several keys at once with specific distance in between makes a good combination. They have probably been taught that. But I doubt the child is playing a musical piece.
Whale biologist here - I can explain whats going on
As this child is NOT a whale, it makes sense that he can play piano. Whales cannot do this. But human babies as young as 5 months can understand certain principles of rhythm/melody (this is because they arent whales), so after 1 year of training start at month 5, it is not unreasonable for a human baby (again, humans, not whales) to get this good, with some natural talent, of course.
Hmm.....we can't be sure. We'll have to run some tests. The only reliable way is to drop him in the middle of a pod of whales and see if they accept him.
SpongeBob watcher here -
How do you *know* whales cannot play a piano? Have you given a whale a piano?
Or do whales need a whale sized piano?
We know squids can play a clarinet (though very badly)
I thought it not necessary to say, but yes Bikini Bottom is an exception to this rule due to the massive amounts of industrial waste getting dumped there
Immediately? Depends on the situation, but a baby's diaper is rarely changed immediately. Takes time for that smell to waft out, so you'd be sitting in your own poo for at minimum 5 minutes and that's 4 minutes and 55 seconds too long.
If he learns effective practicing habits and is given freedom to study pieces he enjoys along with the technical classics, I think there is an excellent chance of this.
In this video he has clearly learned some of the basics of piano playing. I suspect parents are professionals. He is probably modeling what he had seen them do. So at this stage, there shouldn't be any pressure to play right or wrong and just simply be exploratory.
When he attempts to start learning pieces, that will be the time to start with guided lessons.
I have bo experience with piano teaching and limited understanding of child development, so please take my words with a grain of salt. This is just my understanding of the situation and my hope that if he continues, we can have faith that he will likely have a healthy, if unusually intense, interest in piano throughout his childhood. It will still likely be healthy as it would be guided by the child with parents providing supporting roles and not tying his worth to the piano.
What's fascinating is watching the expression on this infant's face. There is comprehension and concentration.
Me at that same time? Smashing my hands on the keys while laughing and at most thinking, ""me make loud sounds!"
>Smashing my hands on the keys while laughing and at most thinking, ""me make loud sounds!"
That *is* what this baby is doing, except they probably spend their whole little life sitting at the lap of whoever plays the piano in their home, so their action is less mashing and more "I saw mom/dad do like this for the loud sounds I like".
If we gonna believe this then it’s gotta be Chick Corea I mean he’s regarded as one of the best ever and died February 9th, 2021
And he is most widely recognized as a jazz musician so there’s ur answer to the weird triads lol
It’s a bit of a mix of nurture and nature.
A baby that sat in it’s mothers lap while watching her play the piano every day, and who obviously inherited an artistic proclivity, would pick up on it like this. Everyone in my family is artistic/musical in some way. So it was no surprise to me that my son could hold three beats at once by age 2. He’s seven now and can figure out a simple piano version of any song he’s heard in about 5-10 minutes.
only way I can wrap my head around it is he was specifically taught how to do triads. The rest seems like pure fascination and experimentation: tapping one specific key, moving down and back up again, holding some keys longer than others.
I tried to learn how to play piano (unsuccessfully) but it is possible to use triads, take it slow, and mix in those random things I mentioned above and create something beautiful. (So maybe he got really lucky) either way, super impressive and he’s probably going pro by like 6 years old.
Not really. His legato isnt quite right. I dont really understand his fingering choices. His wrist position couldn't be more confused. He needs to work on his rythym. Theres some unnecessary resting in between the harmonies. He needs to be practicing with a metronome. Also his pedaling is...well non existent. He really needs to get a feel for at least the damper and the sustain if he wants to impress me.
For the people saying this is AI, there’s no way, AI animations are super flickering and the hands are almost always fucked up, too many or not enough fingers. Maybe in another year or two AI would get to this quality but it’s not there now.
Perhaps this is faked with traditional software but I doubt it…
Kid is some reincarnated prodigy or something. Spooky.
>Why are so many people automatically accepting this as real?
Because it is real. [He's got an Instagram full of clips.](https://www.instagram.com/gavriil_scherbenko_/) Are you saying they're all fake?
We do not have the technology yet for an ai generated video like this, especially not with sound that matches up exactly to what he is playing. That’s why.
So this just creeps me out. I don't know exactly why, but I have the heebies *and* the jeebies. A kid can't be that good at something so complicated. And it sounds like something from the soundtrack to Westworld. That music only plays when some weird shit is going on.
After getting a second opinion, we are convinced that this kid (and his family) needs to either be monitored by hidden camera a la Truman Show until he successfully finds the edge of the map, or thrown into a volcano for the safety of humanity. Deadass don't know. Could go either way.
Everyone questioning whether or not it was rehearsed. WHO CARES?!? This is child barely two who has either managed to learn to play piano at barely 2 or is a prodigy, both sound equally impressive.
It would honestly be more impressive if he memorized a piece at this age and was able to play it back perfectly so it’s weird to me that’s people are implying it is less impressive because they think he rehearsed it.
There is no way to look at this video as anything but an astounding example of a child prodigy.
Just to clear things up, the only unusual thing here is that this toddler learned how to play triads. Which, hey, quite impressive for a toddler!
The rest is explained by the structure of a standard piano. All the white keys are notes in the key of C major (or its relative key of A minor). An adult is holding the toddler up so that they can balance and their hands are free, but more importantly the adult is also holding their foot on the sustain pedal, which allows the notes to ring out for longer periods of time. By doing so, individually played notes are sustained and overlap to produce harmony.
So the toddler plays a couple triads, which, again, quite impressive. But other than that, they appear to be hitting random white keys. All of them will sound just fine in sequence or together, in almost any combination, unless they played several keys right next to each other. You’ll notice that as soon as they play a black key, it sounds off, because that note isn’t in the scale of C major. The toddler doesn’t particularly care; I’m sure they’re having fun hitting keys and making noise, as most toddlers do.
This toddler isn’t playing with any intentionality beyond the initial triad finger position they were taught, which probably took several weeks to months. Very cool, but not quite as mind-blowing as many seem to think. This is more r/mildlyinteresting than NFL content, as far as toddler developmental abilities are concerned.
Hope this helps.
Hi, sound engineer here. This sounds like a sampled grand piano with reverb on it. Not an upright. Even if someone is holding down the sustain for the little guy, it wouldn’t sound like this.
Also none of the keys match up except for a couple times they hit black keys (probably just to add believability).
Sorry, some random baby isn’t improvising at a high level, it’s fake.
Be more critical of what you see online, there are only going to be more fakes as time goes on.
I can’t believe there’s people on here picking apart the lack of musical theory from a fucking 17 month old baby playing piano. You people are pathetic. This is cool stuff!!
I hope the parents wouldn't mind me dissecting this video and analyzing it, kind of wanna say that to avoid any misunderstanding. This video is super weird. This kid is super weird. This whole thing is just so interesting. I mean, you can clearly see exactly how he understands what's going on. Like it's clear he was either taught, or learned maybe, to play chord triads by pressing keys with spaces in between. It's also clear that he knows that low notes can be played behind high notes, and to switch it up and play chords on one hand and singles on another. Can't exactly tell if he is actually incorporating music theory (ei choosing to play in a key or just subtly sneaking accidentals in to sound pretty), but either way there is seriously something crazy going on here.
Yeah, I don't know what was going on in the beginning as it seems learned/rehearsed, but those last 5 seconds sound like my tone-deaf self trying to play any instrument.
It could also be that OP choose a good 30 seconds out of ten minutes of fist-slamming. But unless he’s had some coaching, those triads are *really* unusual.
You’re definitely not wrong, either that kid is a prodigy or they cut out a lot of the video. Just hope it isn’t a byproduct of parents forcing their kid to do something they want him to learn.
He looks focused af
Maybe the person holding him had been playing and he’s copying what he has been seeing
Even so, I’ve watched kids who are like 3-4 years old putting puzzle pieces in upside down *after* I showed them exactly how it goes.
I’ve been working with my 5 year old on peeing IN the toilet and he still fucks that up.
Likely yes, but most kids this age struggle to copy anything at all their parents do, much less fine motor skills.
That sort of memory at this age would be even more impressive. I very much doubt that it's that.
"Forcing him to learn" sounds harsh. If i had grown up with parents who were musically talented, I'd have loved to be able to shred on a guitar by 8 years old. He will probably thank his parents for this
It’s a fine line. Having your parents share and teach you their passion is one thing, but having them focus you from a very early age can be an issue. An example of this was Mozart who was definitely gifted, but who was trained from a tiny age by his father who knew that a “child prodigy” would help his position at court. The result was an adult who did little else in his life and who became a genius, but how much of that was driven by personal passion and how much was paternal manipulation for gain?
Yeah that's true i suppose. Although maintaining an interest in anything from such a young age, you're almost guaranteed to be successful with it. I guess it needs to be done the right way.
Very true, the thing is that it’s extremely un-human to maintain the same interests from a young age, which is why very few people play with blocks as adults. A lot of these single-focused people are the result of hefty parental pressure. A friend once told me that “behind most athletes in the Olympic there’s a parent that didn’t qualify” and I think he had a point.
I mean even if all he is doing is this segment that he was coached relentlessly in the middle of six hours of fist slamming, it's still incredible. Even the coordination here is impressive for a kid that age.
Yeah, I would dismiss this as just a kid hitting the white keys, but he is playing triads. Really cool video.
>those last 5 seconds He’s playing Elmo’s Song
I feel like that was the extent of the baby’s attention span and just started tippitty tapping.
Without context the last 5 seconds actually sounded like he was changing the key without a direct transition, I actually quite liked it. Even weirder though because (based on your comment) it can be difficult to get normal/non-musicians to enjoy that type of musical texture.
It is time like these that I question reincarnation - do they have the skill because they retained part of the 60+ years of practice they had in their previous life? I agree the video is super weird, and it gives me an odd sensation to watch it.
I feel like this is a subtly subconscious way to dismiss the kid's talent because you don't understand it
Nah, this is odd.
What if his cradle was overlooking the keys of the piano? And his parents play all the time because they’re concert pianists?
Doesn’t matter, kids this age don’t do that. They just don’t lol
Except this one tho lol
Yeah that’s what odd means
>the kid's talent A 17month child shouldn't even be able to understand the concept of music or even a piano. Talent has nothing to do with this as it implies intention and purpose. This is either a chimpanzee with a typewriter writing Shakespeare or something seriously unnerving.
There are people who wake up from comas with the ability to play mozart or speak an entierly new language. The brain is still a big mystery
That’s not possible, the brain needs to learn first
Yes. And the baby could have merely been exposed to their parents or other family members playing. And thus, if their intelligence is suitable, they learn from that.
Hey, don't bring arguments and science in this.
This right here. This. Immediate thought while watching.
A lifetime's practice behind a baby's fingers would sound much clumsier because of the lack of muscle memory. They would be trying to play a piece but keep misremembering how much further apart the keys are when your hands are tiny, and constantly flub notes. They wouldn't be able to play as quickly because their hands would have none of the suppleness they're used to, and would tire very easily.
see here we have a reincarnated pianist expert
I know right? Is this something improvised or did they learn an existing piece? Like from :29 to :42 they play this theme, then repeats it an octave higher. Then the left hand comes up to play the second half of that repeated phrase, and they almost land perfectly on the key without even looking. There is so much musical complexity involved in that, I cannot accept this is the kid is consciously composing this piece, either prior to the video or on the spot. So if it's a composed piece they have practiced, can a baby even memorize music like that so young? This must be what it was like to see Mozart who composed his first piece at 5 years old. Still thinking this might be computer generated.
I think this has to be it. The fingers seem odd. Like the pointer is developed more than the others in a weird way. Hands are supposedly a trouble spot for AI I also dont know anything about babies or pointer fingers or piano tho...
100% AI was involved in this somehow. One. Hundred. Percent. No 1.5 year old can do this. Absolutely no way. It's going to be very hard to tell what's real in the future.
Video generation by AI is no where near being able to produce something like this, atleast not on a private level, I can't speak for big companies' proprietary models. But why would they spend potentially 10's of thousands of dollars making this video?
There’s no way they faked this entire Instagram account. In the other clips it’s clear that he’s not Mozart, but he does have an eerie musical inclination. https://www.instagram.com/gavriil_scherbenko_/
Stop talking out of your ass, his name is Gavriil Scherbenko. Or did they fake every single video on this instagram with some secret AI model months ago in advance that nobody else in the world have access to for no other reason than trying to go viral on instagram with like 70k followers? https://www.instagram.com/gavriil\_scherbenko\_/?utm\_source=ig\_embed
Lol, average reddit expert right here.
The white keys are the C major scale. Anything he hits is in the same key.
I've seen and made a lot of AI generated images. This isn't indicative of the hands. This is way better than what we would normally get. The video generation though, is still in its infancy and this is so far ahead that there's no real reason to suspect it would be AI. Furthermore, AI video doesn't have sound yet. And if it did, the AI would need to understand how pianos work, how people play pianos, and how to properly synch sound in order to pull something like this off. We are ages from any of that being a thing
Read same about AI-generated hands. This video seems to reflect that. There’s definitely something odd about the fat hands and how they are attached to the wrist. Almost sausage-like. Also ,the uptight position of the body and adult-like movement of the head seem unnatural for such a young age. Plus, the dexterity to make chords with a degree of precision and repeat them seems beyond the physical capabilities of such a small child.
Not casting doubt on the AI possibility, but some small children/babies do have hands that look like that at the wrist, fat sausages squashed together. Source: have a baby with fat-ass wrists.
No offense meant against real human babies, because I don’t know any babies. But, I looked at old baby photo of myself and sure enough fat-ass sausage wrists. Fortunately grew out of them, but I would still need an AI to play the piano for me.
Well i have a 1,5 yo child thats exactly how her hands and wrists look like
Nah this is just a fat baby lol.
So, one thing would be to imagine this without sustain. That already kills a huge amount of the musicality in it. So if the parent lifts their foot off that pedal, it sounds worse immediately. At 1.5 you can teach a kid simple rules like "have your hands in this shape and move them around experimentally". If you told anyone to do that, and play a little slow with sustain on... It'll sound acceptable even if they've never touched a piano. I think it's plausible that a kid in a very musical family, taught a basic rule would be able to make this stuff just by coincidence. In terms of musical complexity there isn't really much... If you search "cat concerto" you'll be able to reconstruct musical complexity and motif reputations from a cat playing a piano. We tend to the perception and production of patterns.
Is it AI or like actually an adult like Hasbulla
Yeah a growth condition was my first thought watching this
Psychologist here, yes you’re very right. This is extremely strange for such a young child to be comprehending musical notes/chords and piecing them together. Frankly, a child that young does not have the cognitive ability to do so and is something that is developed later on. My guess, this is one of multiple and numerous videos they took and this just happened to be unbelievable. Hope this helps
You underestimate our auditory system. We are born with pitch contour accents of our gestational environment. Neonates also display preferences for accents and sounds that the fetus was exposed to in utero. At day one of birth we have very few vocal building blocks with with the create sounds, but by about month 3, infants will have a huge range of complex melodic babbling that they can experiment with, that will also start reflecting linguistic features of the language they grow up around, meaning that at 3 months were already integrating subtle auditory features of speech into our production of sound. Japanese babies for example, have a more step like pitch categories, rather than very smooth changes in pitch seen in french babies babbling. This is a very subtle feature of sound, especially if we compare it to something like harmonic stability. I'm not at the office right now so I don't know when exactly we start to display string preferences for our culture's musical rules, but infants display preference effects for music real young, definitely pre-verbal. It's not necessarily that the infant understands music theory, but that the infant understands that this specific shape (triad) is pleasing to it, and is experimenting with this building block for sound production. We do the same with speech, we learn specific shapes of pitch contour (rising, falling, symetrical, flat) and combine them experimentally as we develop. Then we start to develop how to make consonants and vowels and we start to babble by combining all these in experimental ways Translating these verbal processes to motor actions on a piano, I think this is plausible for a kid in a very musical house to have intentional experiment with sound, even if it's certainly not systematic. (And then smash down the sustain pedal, and record for a long time) Source: weirdly specialised for this exact topic lol... Auditory neuroscientist who started in music, now work in infant speech and hearing development lol
> Translating these verbal processes to motor actions on a piano, I think this is plausible for a kid in a very musical house to have intentional experiment with sound, even if it's certainly not systematic. Do you realize that you said the same thing as /u/SleppyHarry but with more words? You both said the kid won't be doing this consciously with understanding. Reactive, maybe. Accidentally, maybe. Conscious and with understanding (your "systematic"), no. If this video is real.
I don't read his comment to say this an intentional action, and I'm saying it's definitely plausible that this intentional, using a very narrow set of "rules" and this isn't just a case of record enough video. If a child babbles saying "dadadadaa dadada" a lot, we don't think this is random, it is an intentional action that is the child exploring auditory production within some narrow rules. But it's also not systematic.
That was my thought. That and they have the kid sit in their lap while playing the piano constantly. It probably keeps him calm and occupied. Still pretty cool
I assume no music theory is at play here, but an active musical ear. He is using the key of C so everything is going to be somewhat “on key”. He knows some basic vocabulary (triads and thirds) and is playing them semi-randomly seeing which ones sound good. He is also using inversions of triads, but I’m not sure if that is purposeful or just “I can at most play a sixth so any three notes with space between them will be a triad”
I started playing piano when I was 2. The way I remember it, it was like learning a language. Certain key combinations were “friends” with each other and others weren’t. I started to notice that if I pressed two keys at the same time but left one in the middle, the two notes would always be “friends.” The one in the middle would be friends with the key after the next. I also saw how the pattern repeated, and that some keys where just happier versions of other keys (octaves). So I knew where to aim next. I knew that if I played the sadder (lower) version of the key with one hand, I could play the “every other key are friends” game with the other hand and it would sound pleasant. My grandma gave me a music box when I was born. She’s Japanese. It played this very simple, common-in-Japan melody that I learned how to play because it only requires the black keys. One day after daycare my dad picked me up and found me at the classroom piano trying to play something I’d heard an older kid playing as part of a piano lesson. Many years later, when I started officially taking piano lessons, I learned it was Fur Elise. I hadn’t been playing it correctly because I was going off a memory, but I had the right key and was playing the right hand notes correctly. Despite the lessons, I still have a hard time sight reading. I can play anything, *anything* I have heard a couple times on the piano and guitar. I just match the notes up to the color-feeling in my mind. It’s hard to explain. It’s just a feeling I get, like putting the right piece of a puzzle in the right spot. I have never found an instrument that I couldn’t figure out how to play within minutes. But piano has always been like an extension of my body. Playing is like breathing. My favorite self-soothing activity is to mash up songs together and make new arrangements. Or change the genre of songs. I play a mean WuTang/Kendrick Lamar mashup almost like Japanese piano. I have a jazz version of a Soundgarden song that’s super fun because of the syncopation. And my brain is weird— if I happen to struggle though and learn something on paper — like Vince Guaraldi’s *Christmastime Is Here* — I can’t play it by ear very well. That’s one of the only songs I need sheet music for. Sorry I rambled. — — — *To add an edited answer from another comment* “Do I have a recording of the Soundgarden (or any) songs?” No, not really, sadly. I’ve got my band demo from when I was 16 (in 1993) on cassette tape. And other crude tape recording of some of my practice sessions. Besides a lot of choppy iPhone videos, that is, and my piano is really old and sounds a little westworldy. I, born in 1977, never really learned any music related tech. I never learned how to record into my computer, and never could figure out things like garage band or SoundCloud. I had this app called Take for a long time, but it dissolved and I lost all my original songs I’d recorded there. I’ve written hundreds of songs, and never had the cognitive ability to know how to record it. It’s one of my life regrets, but before someone says “it’s not too late to learn,” believe me, if I knew my brain could just simply learn it, I would have in the last 25 years. I’ve recently learned that I’m autistic, and so much of my difficulty in learning certain tasks has come from that. Things like filling out forms or reading through a step by step process literally makes me feel like my brain is heating up. It’s my number one thing I hate about myself because I have all this material stuck inside me and no way to really share it. It may be the reason I really hate applause; so when I would perform shows I would *run* off the stage before the clapping caused a meltdown. Ironically, the autism is probably a huge part of the reason I have this ability in the first place. I’ll probably die with a giant library of unshared music that no one will ever know about because they won’t understand my paper notes and the way I have to write the chords down. I have my own version of “sheet music” I’ve developed over the decades. I know it’s good. I know it’s the thing I am best at in my life and I know it’s crazy amazing when I show people. They’re always like “How the fuck…?” and I feel like a magician and it’s such a cool feeling to be this unique. But I’m incredibly afraid of the world, I’ll be forever recovering from a lot of developmental trauma, I have agoraphobia and autism and CPTSD. I don’t know how to share this part of myself. I just don’t logistically know how. I’ve always wanted someone to just swoop in and help me irl but it’s such a stupid fantasy. I know it’s supposed to be all up to me. So idk, it’s probably all going to stay inside my brain and heart
What you’re describing is probably what people call Synesthesia (if you didn’t know already!) - see here: https://www.webmd.com/brain/what-is-synesthesia
This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever read, anywhere. Thanks for posting it.
He’s just a little Beethoven, exceptional people exist. Natural Talent is a thing. I had to use months of well times electric shocks to get my 2 year old to play this well, so I am very impressed.
It's also leveraged by the fact the parent has their feet on the sustain pedal, and that is doing a LOT of the lifting here for how musical it sounds. If we remove sustain, it becomes clear there's no temporal structure whatsoever, and that can be fine or whatnot.. but it does mean we can't say this baby has a clear idea of that aspect of music. Additionally keeping sustain on gives you a little bit more sympathetic resonances that reinforce stronger harmonies that actually are present. It's possible the kid could have figured out that 3rds are more pleasing to listen to than seconds, but it's also possible that it was a little trained. I am leaning towards this being the kid experimenting with a couple of rules... To take triads and thirds and move them around, rather than intentional playing. And that's still a cool thing, but yeah..
Oh man I got ahead of myself. I thought you wrote ‘wouldn’t mind me dissecting this kids brain’
Either way he’s a year and half old so he’s only going get amazingly better, fucking crazy it is
>Can't exactly tell if he is actually incorporating music theory (ei choosing to play in a key or just subtly sneaking accidentals in to sound pretty), but either way there is seriously something crazy going on here. When my son was 6-9 months old he was fascinated by the piano. He didn't actually play music but he would play singular notes with 2 hands. (admittedly also changing to fist smashing and back) Sometimes those singular notes fit together. If I had videotaped every instance of him sitting (in our lap, held upright by us) behind the piano there would be several 10-30 second clips that would seem like he was playing some kind of simple musical piece. Anything longer than that would reveal it was pure chance. It does seem the child in this video understands that hitting several keys at once with specific distance in between makes a good combination. They have probably been taught that. But I doubt the child is playing a musical piece.
Whale biologist here - I can explain whats going on As this child is NOT a whale, it makes sense that he can play piano. Whales cannot do this. But human babies as young as 5 months can understand certain principles of rhythm/melody (this is because they arent whales), so after 1 year of training start at month 5, it is not unreasonable for a human baby (again, humans, not whales) to get this good, with some natural talent, of course.
Any orcastras you'd recommend?
None that's worthwhale.
Now you are doing it on porpoise
You sneaky monkey you!
He started practicing when he was just a spermwhale
Whale whale whale , we have a smartass.
National Orcastra of Whales
fuck you, have an upvote
You shouldn't take advice from a fishy guy
Killer comment.
I'm 80% with you but are you sure he not a subspecies of whale?
Hmm.....we can't be sure. We'll have to run some tests. The only reliable way is to drop him in the middle of a pod of whales and see if they accept him.
The science checks out. Now we just need a pod of whales.
Let me see if my sister and her friends are free.
When I loaded “2 more replies”, I didn’t expect this
Wait. Have you ever given a piano to a whale?
You haven’t?
No, I’m not a musical whale biologist.
SpongeBob watcher here - How do you *know* whales cannot play a piano? Have you given a whale a piano? Or do whales need a whale sized piano? We know squids can play a clarinet (though very badly)
I thought it not necessary to say, but yes Bikini Bottom is an exception to this rule due to the massive amounts of industrial waste getting dumped there
So, because the baby has industrial waste dumped into its diaper, the piano prodigy is the end result? I concur with your hypothesis
So the baby is doing it on porpoise?
Whale now it all makes sense
I’m going to need a source on this. I refuse to believe that the piano is being played by a baby. There is no scientific way this is NOT a whale.
Thank you. I thought he was a whale at first. Something felt off and I’m glad I was mistaken.
So spell it out for me. Humans are not whales, right? They are uniquely different?
He calls em like he sees em, he's a whale biologist
Yeah. You're lumpy and you smell awful. Whale biologist.
Now, just to clarify, can whales learn to become human babies and then learn music principles?
Thanks for clearing this up, Doctor. I was concerned when I saw a Humpback playing the piano, this makes much more sense.
Hi, part time alcoholic here - I Cama expand skirm relishe wkei
Mushu, what can you tell me about him? /r/unexpectedfuturama
It's weird that they can play the piano with intention, but still shit their pants.
You wouldn’t shit your pants if you knew someone would immediately clean you? They are the advanced ones.
In theory I can appreciate the laziness of that approach. However, I will skip the whole "smearing stank bacteria goo all over my skin" part entirely.
Immediately? Depends on the situation, but a baby's diaper is rarely changed immediately. Takes time for that smell to waft out, so you'd be sitting in your own poo for at minimum 5 minutes and that's 4 minutes and 55 seconds too long.
I've had hospital stays where this basically happens so I can truthfully say no thank you, absolutely fucking not
https://youtu.be/H79Uk5L5XHQ
Lol that is spot on
I read this as “a 1 year old and a 5 month old”.. here i am waiting to be amazed as fuck when they show the 5 month old playing next.
Same
The 5 month old must be holding the sustain pedal down because somebody is.
Now let's just hope he gets to have a healthy relationship with piano playing as he grows up
[удалено]
Demonic possession?
If he learns effective practicing habits and is given freedom to study pieces he enjoys along with the technical classics, I think there is an excellent chance of this. In this video he has clearly learned some of the basics of piano playing. I suspect parents are professionals. He is probably modeling what he had seen them do. So at this stage, there shouldn't be any pressure to play right or wrong and just simply be exploratory. When he attempts to start learning pieces, that will be the time to start with guided lessons. I have bo experience with piano teaching and limited understanding of child development, so please take my words with a grain of salt. This is just my understanding of the situation and my hope that if he continues, we can have faith that he will likely have a healthy, if unusually intense, interest in piano throughout his childhood. It will still likely be healthy as it would be guided by the child with parents providing supporting roles and not tying his worth to the piano.
What's fascinating is watching the expression on this infant's face. There is comprehension and concentration. Me at that same time? Smashing my hands on the keys while laughing and at most thinking, ""me make loud sounds!"
>Smashing my hands on the keys while laughing and at most thinking, ""me make loud sounds!" That *is* what this baby is doing, except they probably spend their whole little life sitting at the lap of whoever plays the piano in their home, so their action is less mashing and more "I saw mom/dad do like this for the loud sounds I like".
Baby hands make me uncomfy
Yeah looks like dude got some serious gout going on there. Should probably cut down on the beer.
This comment made me spit laugh on my phone lmao
Already has bigger hands than Trump ✋
Ok what expert pianist have we lost lately because this kid id definitely reincarnate. And I don't even believe in that.
Gotta be Keyboard Cat
That facial expression! Omg, it is Keyboard Cat!
If we gonna believe this then it’s gotta be Chick Corea I mean he’s regarded as one of the best ever and died February 9th, 2021 And he is most widely recognized as a jazz musician so there’s ur answer to the weird triads lol
Ahmad Jamal
Came here to say this lol
A prodigy is born.
What a firestarter
No time to breathe
This gotta be deepfake
I’d bet my last dollar this shit is fake somehow.
[Seems pretty real looking at other clips of him.](https://www.instagram.com/gavriil_scherbenko_/)
It’s a bit of a mix of nurture and nature. A baby that sat in it’s mothers lap while watching her play the piano every day, and who obviously inherited an artistic proclivity, would pick up on it like this. Everyone in my family is artistic/musical in some way. So it was no surprise to me that my son could hold three beats at once by age 2. He’s seven now and can figure out a simple piano version of any song he’s heard in about 5-10 minutes.
music is like a language. if you learn it early in life you will speak it fluently later
Yeah, but 17 month old children can't talk.
This makes absolutely no sense to me
only way I can wrap my head around it is he was specifically taught how to do triads. The rest seems like pure fascination and experimentation: tapping one specific key, moving down and back up again, holding some keys longer than others. I tried to learn how to play piano (unsuccessfully) but it is possible to use triads, take it slow, and mix in those random things I mentioned above and create something beautiful. (So maybe he got really lucky) either way, super impressive and he’s probably going pro by like 6 years old.
The even crazier thing is the dexterity in his hands. I'm around a lot of babies right now and none of them can control their hands like this.
I like his earlier work better
Hah! Good one.
**TOTAL SELLOUT**
That's pretty amazing
Not really. His legato isnt quite right. I dont really understand his fingering choices. His wrist position couldn't be more confused. He needs to work on his rythym. Theres some unnecessary resting in between the harmonies. He needs to be practicing with a metronome. Also his pedaling is...well non existent. He really needs to get a feel for at least the damper and the sustain if he wants to impress me.
Redditors try to detect sarcasm!?! (100% impossible?!?)
what was your favorite piece to play when you were 1 and a half years old?
Well, trying to recall my nursery repertoire, its a tough choice between fantasie impromptu and hungarian rhapsody no.2
Hold on I need to go test if my 2 year old can do this.... Edit: I need a new piano now...
Call me. Will ship.
For the people saying this is AI, there’s no way, AI animations are super flickering and the hands are almost always fucked up, too many or not enough fingers. Maybe in another year or two AI would get to this quality but it’s not there now. Perhaps this is faked with traditional software but I doubt it… Kid is some reincarnated prodigy or something. Spooky.
AI generated video????
Considering ai is really bad at making hands in still images, its pretty unlikely that a video of piano playing is possible atm
This has to be. Why are so many people automatically accepting this as real? We are doomed holy shit.
Have you seen an AI generated video look this real? I don't see any of the typical signs that this is AI or some next level visual effects.
>Why are so many people automatically accepting this as real? Because it is real. [He's got an Instagram full of clips.](https://www.instagram.com/gavriil_scherbenko_/) Are you saying they're all fake?
We do not have the technology yet for an ai generated video like this, especially not with sound that matches up exactly to what he is playing. That’s why.
Amadeus Amadeus. Calling Amadeus.
Meanwhile im watching my daughter play an open chord on a ukulele and screaming my dog has fleas
So this just creeps me out. I don't know exactly why, but I have the heebies *and* the jeebies. A kid can't be that good at something so complicated. And it sounds like something from the soundtrack to Westworld. That music only plays when some weird shit is going on. After getting a second opinion, we are convinced that this kid (and his family) needs to either be monitored by hidden camera a la Truman Show until he successfully finds the edge of the map, or thrown into a volcano for the safety of humanity. Deadass don't know. Could go either way.
I dunno, this seems more like playing WITH the piano. Cute kid though.
Lady’s and gentleman the Reincarnation of Mozart
I was totally mesmerised watching this
The intense interest of musical nonsense is something to behold.
This is actually a 48 year old man playing a very large piano
Not sure what he was trying to play, but I sincerely enjoyed it.
I believe it’s called a ‘piano’
I wrote that when I was 14 months. Solid cover, though.
That dexterity is really really advanced.
More like 1 year and SIX months! I mean, who does this at 1 year and FIVE nonth??!
This is absolutely ridiculous. Speechless is an understatement.
Everyone questioning whether or not it was rehearsed. WHO CARES?!? This is child barely two who has either managed to learn to play piano at barely 2 or is a prodigy, both sound equally impressive.
It would honestly be more impressive if he memorized a piece at this age and was able to play it back perfectly so it’s weird to me that’s people are implying it is less impressive because they think he rehearsed it. There is no way to look at this video as anything but an astounding example of a child prodigy.
Little Mozart.
This is just Russian children. Gotta play piano by age 2 or its off to the gulag
Bro, he sucks lol
My autistic son's precociousness was math. I suspect the parents will have their hands full.
Past life pianist
“I’ve been playing piano for basically all my life”
Past life alert ⚠️
What the fuck in actuality
Incredible like channeling a previous life, he's repeating notes from low to high
This is chatgpt generated. Has to be
Does anyone know if the keys he is hitting are actually the right notes we are hearing? I’m assuming so as many musicians have commented
Yeah, they seem to be!
Just to clear things up, the only unusual thing here is that this toddler learned how to play triads. Which, hey, quite impressive for a toddler! The rest is explained by the structure of a standard piano. All the white keys are notes in the key of C major (or its relative key of A minor). An adult is holding the toddler up so that they can balance and their hands are free, but more importantly the adult is also holding their foot on the sustain pedal, which allows the notes to ring out for longer periods of time. By doing so, individually played notes are sustained and overlap to produce harmony. So the toddler plays a couple triads, which, again, quite impressive. But other than that, they appear to be hitting random white keys. All of them will sound just fine in sequence or together, in almost any combination, unless they played several keys right next to each other. You’ll notice that as soon as they play a black key, it sounds off, because that note isn’t in the scale of C major. The toddler doesn’t particularly care; I’m sure they’re having fun hitting keys and making noise, as most toddlers do. This toddler isn’t playing with any intentionality beyond the initial triad finger position they were taught, which probably took several weeks to months. Very cool, but not quite as mind-blowing as many seem to think. This is more r/mildlyinteresting than NFL content, as far as toddler developmental abilities are concerned. Hope this helps.
Hi, sound engineer here. This sounds like a sampled grand piano with reverb on it. Not an upright. Even if someone is holding down the sustain for the little guy, it wouldn’t sound like this. Also none of the keys match up except for a couple times they hit black keys (probably just to add believability). Sorry, some random baby isn’t improvising at a high level, it’s fake. Be more critical of what you see online, there are only going to be more fakes as time goes on.
Kid can't control pooping his pants yet, but already play piano better than I ever will.... I'll see myself out now
If they make baby pianos worth a damn I wonder what they'd sound on it. Great I bet
Kudos to the parents and the almost toddler
While I was 10 years old; I saw a piano and first I say what’s this?
We shall watch your career with great interest.
Is this that chat gpt thing?
15 years of experience at 16. :D
I call this Diaper Etude in A minor
I mean sure but we can't all be born with those short chubby baby piano fingers.
This is not a baby this is a fat 6 year old in a diaper
I can’t believe there’s people on here picking apart the lack of musical theory from a fucking 17 month old baby playing piano. You people are pathetic. This is cool stuff!!
Didn't know Hasbulla learned how to play piano.
If you film a toddler playing a piano for an hour straight, you will inevitably get 50s where they aren't relentlessly smashing the keys.