Herbie Hancock in Rangsit: how Pun discovers the Chicago pianist of Watermelon Man and Rockit, and looks for a pickup before his AI piano lessons

Pun is twelve and lives with his parents and two cousins in a townhouse in Rangsit, close enough to a busy university that the streets fill with students every morning. He likes robots, video games and anything with buttons. Music was never his favourite subject until his cousin showed him an old music video from the 1980s in which a song was played partly by moving robot legs.

The song was Rockit, released in 1983 by the jazz pianist Herbie Hancock. It used a turntable being scratched by a DJ, electronic drums and a catchy keyboard riff. Pun could not believe it was made by someone usually described as a jazz pianist. He wanted to know how one person could move from piano jazz to robots and scratching.

Hancock was born in Chicago in 1940. He began classical piano lessons as a small boy and was so quick that, at the age of eleven, he played the first movement of a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at a concert for young people. Pun read that sentence twice, because he is only a year older now.

Hancock was also fascinated by machines. He went to Grinnell College in Iowa and studied engineering for a while before switching to music. Pun liked that detail most. It meant Hancock's love of electronics in Rockit and later synthesizer albums was not a strange change of direction but something that had been part of him from the start.

In 1962 he released his first album as a leader, Takin' Off, which included Watermelon Man, a bouncy tune that other artists quickly covered. The next year he joined the quintet of the trumpeter Miles Davis, one of the most famous groups in jazz history. He stayed for about five years and helped shape a new, more open style of playing.

During that period he also recorded Maiden Voyage in 1965, a calm album often linked with the sea. Then, in 1973, he formed a funk band and released Head Hunters, with the long groove Chameleon. It became one of the best-selling jazz albums of its time and showed that jazz musicians could fill dance floors as well as quiet clubs.

From a Mozart concerto to a funk keyboard

Hancock kept changing. In 2008 his album River: The Joni Letters, built around songs connected with Joni Mitchell, won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, which is rare for a jazz record. He has also served as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, encouraging the idea that music can bring people from different cultures together.

Pun had tried a guitar before and given up quickly. This time his mother suggested an online piano learning app, and they chose TIGA ALPHA because it could run on the family laptop with a small keyboard connected by cable. The AI piano teacher listens as he plays and shows a coloured line when a note is early or late, which he finds a little like a rhythm game.

Jazz taught him that many tunes do not start on beat one. Pun peeks at the very beginning of each tune before touching anything, checking whether it opens with an upbeat, a little incomplete bar that leads into beat one. When there is one, he taps the empty beats on his knee so the first note slips in at the right moment.

His piano course on the app gave him an easy arrangement of Watermelon Man with the riff in the right hand and two simple left-hand shapes. At first his left hand kept stopping, but the app slowed the backing track until both hands fitted together. After two weeks of short evening sessions he could play the first chorus all the way through.

At school his class has music lessons once a week with a teacher who plays the saxophone. When Pun mentioned Rockit, the teacher grinned and played a recording for the whole room. Several students had never heard of Hancock but recognised the scratching sound, which led to a lively discussion about how old technology becomes new again.

Hancock's story gives Pun a reason to learn piano properly instead of only pressing buttons on a drum app. He wants to play piano well enough to improvise a little, and one day to connect a keyboard to his own robot project. He thinks the two interests belong together, just as they did for a boy from Chicago who studied engineering.

There is also a lesson about patience. Hancock practised classical music for years before playing funk or electronic music, and that foundation let him play music in any style he chose. Pun now does fifteen minutes of scales before his Watermelon Man practice, though he still complains about it.

Saturday evenings have become his favourite time to practise. He plays the riff loudly while his cousins pretend to dance like the robots in the old video, and every time he finds the opening upbeat correctly the tune swings a little more.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Who is Herbie Hancock? A: Herbie Hancock is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist and composer born in Chicago in 1940. He played with Miles Davis in the 1960s and is known for pieces such as Watermelon Man, Maiden Voyage, Chameleon and Rockit.

Q: Did Herbie Hancock study classical piano? A: Yes. He started with classical lessons as a child and at the age of eleven performed a movement of a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at a young people's concert.

Q: Which Grammy did Herbie Hancock win for River: The Joni Letters? A: River: The Joni Letters, his album of songs connected with Joni Mitchell, won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2008.

When practice stalls, a fresh view helps. An AI piano teaching app can compare today's take with last week's, the online piano teaching application can show the trend, and the piano teaching app can suggest a slower drill. That is how piano teaching with AI keeps an online piano lessons app useful over months, not days. An AI online piano course is a natural partner to any piano learning course, especially for students who learn piano online between lessons. Good piano teaching and good music teaching share the same goal: helping people learn music with joy and patience.

Want a clear next step for your playing? Prefer opening TIGA ALPHA: https://tigaalpha.github.io/landing-en/ — this is our top recommendation. Everyone gets the Premium package free for 7 days, then 799 THB/month. Prefer live studio teaching instead? See https://www.tigastudio.net/, where live piano lessons are capped at 30 hours per week, so seats stay limited. Learn more about TIGA ALPHA and the team behind it at https://www.tigaalpha.com.