Basics to Breakthroughs is a six-week, self-paced course that helps working choral conductors use AI — primarily Claude — as a genuine thinking and working partner. Move through the material on your own schedule: rehearsal prep, parent communication, score study, your music library, your workflows, and your time, all reconsidered through a tool you can actually trust with your work.
Designed for high school, community, and church choir directors of every comfort level — anyone spending more hours on administrative work than on the music itself, and ready to change that. You don't need a technical background for this. You need curiosity, a willingness to try things, and about two hours a week.
Your board wants a policy. Your section leaders are already drafting rehearsal plans with ChatGPT, whether or not you've weighed in. Your own students are using it for homework tonight. The tools aren't optional anymore — the only real choice left is whether you're the one deciding how they show up in your program, or whether you're catching up to decisions other people already made without you in the room.
Basics to Breakthroughs isn't about turning you into a technologist. It's about making sure that when AI shows up in your rehearsal room — and it already has — it's there because you put it there on purpose, with a framework you trust and boundaries you set yourself.
Every week follows the same shape: a core teaching session, an on-demand video, a curated reading list, and a weekly assignment — each one built to leave you with something real, not just notes.
Where AI actually comes from, the kinds you'll encounter in your own work, and why choral musicians — already expert pattern-recognizers of sound and rehearsal-room behavior — are better positioned for this than most.
You'll walk away with: your workflow map and the pain points you're solving for.
Prompt craft for the rehearsal room — building requests that produce plans and materials you'll actually use, and learning to read AI output the way you'd read a run-through: critically, not at face value.
You'll walk away with: a full week of rehearsals, planned with Claude.
What counts as your data — score details, singer ranges, rehearsal notes — and how to feed it to AI so the answers actually fit your ensemble, from repertoire research to program building.
You'll walk away with: a full 60-minute concert program, designed start to finish.
Communication systems, finding your AI voice, and building a standing assistant that already knows your ensemble, your constraints, and your preferences before you ask it anything.
You'll walk away with: your first custom Claude Project, built and running.
Copyright, bias, hallucination detection, and a framework for deciding — for yourself — what you'll use AI for, what you won't, and how you'll talk about it with students and administrators.
You'll walk away with: your Personal AI Ethics Statement, in writing.
A survey of what's next worth knowing about, consolidated into a toolkit you'll actually keep using — plus a 90-day plan for what comes after the course ends.
You'll walk away with: your finished toolkit, and your Week 1 goals honored or revised.
“AI is a mirror made of patterns.”
— Beth PhilemonEvery tool you learn in this course runs through the same repeatable lens — input, output, human judgment, ethical stakes — a habit of evaluation, not a checklist. AI shows up throughout as a briefed colleague: capable of producing a draft, never capable of replacing your musical judgment. Think of it like a well-trained singer who delivers the wrong notes with complete conviction — the commitment to the performance doesn't tell you whether the notes are right. You still have to know the score.
Not vague inspiration — specific, finished artifacts, built in your own context, for your own ensemble.
Your workflow map — the exact places AI can save you real time, and the places it can't.
A full week of rehearsals, planned start to finish with Claude.
A complete 60-minute concert program, researched and built.
Your own custom Claude Project — a standing assistant that already knows your ensemble.
Your Personal AI Ethics Statement, in writing — ready to share with your board.
The language to explain — confidently — what you will and won't use AI for, to parents, colleagues, and administrators.
A finished AI toolkit, plus a 90-day plan for what comes after the course ends.
Lifetime access, so you can revisit any week as your own practice develops.
You'll leave with a working AI toolkit, a personal ethics framework you can share with students and administrators, and at least one automated workflow already saving you time. Most importantly, you'll have proof — artifacts you built, in your context, for your ensemble — that this works, plus the confidence to keep learning long after you finish the six weeks.
Six weeks of self-paced material, a core teaching session and on-demand video each week, curated reading lists, participant worksheets and a weekly assignment, the full rehearsal prompt library, and lifetime access to revisit as your practice develops.
Everything opens the moment you enroll. There's no cohort schedule to keep — work through Week 1 tonight or over the next month, and come back to any week later as your own practice develops.
Claude is the tool taught throughout the course, and its free tier is enough to start. If you'd rather work in ChatGPT or Gemini, the frameworks transfer directly — the thinking is the point, not the app.
Beth is the founder of ChoirBaton and a working choral conductor. She built Basics to Breakthroughs out of her own practice — the tools she actually uses, the questions she's had to answer for her own program, and the framework she wishes someone had handed her before she started.
No. Curiosity and a willingness to try things is the whole prerequisite — the course is built for choir teachers, not technologists.
Claude is the primary tool taught throughout, and you can start on its free tier. The frameworks transfer if you'd rather work in ChatGPT or Gemini.
No — this is entirely self-paced. Move through the six weeks whenever your schedule allows, and revisit any week as your practice develops.
Yes. It's designed for high school, community, and church choir directors of every comfort level.
Week 5 covers exactly this — what to put into an AI tool, what to keep out, and how to build an ethics framework you can defend to a parent, a colleague, or an administrator.
No — if anything, it sharpens it. Every tool in this course runs through the same lens: AI produces a draft, you make the call. You'll finish more confident in your own judgment, not more dependent on a tool.
Because poking around and having a repeatable system are two different things. This course gives you the prompts, the evaluation habit, and the ethical framework so you're not starting from scratch every week — and so you can explain your choices to anyone who asks.
It's built for about two hours a week, on your own schedule, with no live sessions to show up for. Most weeks pay that time back the same week, in rehearsal prep or admin work you're no longer doing twice.
Six weeks from now, you can be exactly where you are today — or you can be running your program with a framework you trust and the time you got back to show for it. Basics to Breakthroughs is open now, entirely self-paced, for a one-time $197.
Get started today before this once in a lifetime opportunity expires.