The SCORE Check
Your check for whether a response deserves your trust, and what to do when it doesn't.
ChoirBaton Institute · Self-Paced Course
Use AI without giving away
Use AI without giving away
the part of conducting
that requires you.
Basics to Breakthroughs is a practical course for choral conductors who want to work more effectively, think more critically about these tools, and decide for themselves where AI belongs in their musical and professional lives.
Maybe you're somewhere in between
Curious, a little skeptical,
Curious, a little skeptical,
and tired of the AI hype.
You know AI isn't going away. You've probably tried ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Copilot.
Sometimes it's astonishing. Sometimes it's confidently wrong. Sometimes you think, I could have just written this myself.
And underneath all of that are bigger questions.
- What is this actually good for?
- What shouldn't I use it for?
- How do I get better results?
- How do I know when a result is trustworthy?
- What does ethical use look like with my singers and students?
- How do I use these tools without flattening my own artistic judgment?
That's what this course is about.
The idea underneath the whole course
AI should make you a more capable conductor,
AI should make you a more capable conductor,
not a less thoughtful one.
The goal isn't to remove yourself from the work. It's to become more intentional about where you belong in it. Every lesson runs through the same habit: AI produces a draft, and you make the call.
What AI does well
Organizing. Transforming. Summarizing. Generating possibilities. Finding patterns in information you already have.
What you still own
Taste. Context. Relationships. Interpretation. Responsibility. Artistic judgment.
What changes
Where you start,
Where you start,
and where you finish.
BeforeAfter
“I occasionally ask ChatGPT things.”“I know how to structure a useful AI conversation.”
“Sometimes the answer is good.”“I know how to evaluate an answer, and how to improve it.”
“I have a folder of prompts.”“I have a workspace set up for the work I actually do every week.”
“I don't know what these systems keep.”“I know what belongs in them, and what doesn't.”
“Every new AI tool makes me feel behind.”“I have a way to evaluate any new tool in a few minutes.”
“I worry this will replace the human part.”“I know where the tool stops and my judgment begins.”
Start the course — $197
One payment. Everything opens the moment you enroll.
The method
You'll leave with a way to think,
You'll leave with a way to think,
not just a list of tools.
The course is built on a small set of frameworks that stay useful when the products change. They're the part you keep.
The Prompt Ladder
- Ask It
- Shape It
- Plan It
- Ground It
- Pressure-Test It
Five rungs for turning a vague request into one AI can actually do well, and a rule that comes with it: don't climb higher than the task requires.
The Meta Prompt
You bring the task. The AI interviews you. Together you climb the ladder.
Your AI Lens
The questions you run before you hand AI anything that matters.
The Handoff Brief
Goal, context, capabilities, guardrails, approvals, done. The page you fill in before any system carries your work forward.
The New-Tool Protocol
What to ask about any new AI product, starting with the job it was built to do.
Your 90-Day Plan
Keep, build, explore, stop, share. What you'll do with all of this after the last video.
The Prompt Ladder, in one example
See what changes
See what changes
when the prompt changes.
Rung one · Ask It
“Give me a rehearsal plan for this piece.”
You'll get something. It will be generic, because the model has to guess everything that matters.
Rung four · Ground It
“Plan a 45-minute rehearsal for my 38-voice SATB community choir. We perform in five weeks. The altos are insecure in measures 43 to 58, the tempo keeps rushing in the B section, and tonight's priority is the vowel on ‘alleluia.’ Here are my score notes.”
Now it's working with your ensemble, your timeline, and your ears.
Rung five · Pressure-Test It
“Before you finalize it, tell me what you're assuming about my singers, what you'd need to know to do this better, and one alternative sequence.”
Now it's showing you its reasoning, so you can decide.
Learn the whole ladder — $197
The Prompt Ladder is Module 2, and every module is yours from the first day.
Tools you keep after the videos end
Twenty-three handouts,
Twenty-three handouts,
each built for a specific moment.
When you're staring at a blank chat windowThe Prompt Ladder card · The Meta Prompt
When the answer sounds convincing but you're not sure it's rightSCORE Check · Verification Checklist · Hallucination Spotting
When it gives you something wrong at eleven at nightWhen It Gives You Something Wrong · Failure Diagnostic card
When a recurring job deserves its own workspaceProject Setup Sheet · The Handoff Brief
When your administrator, board, or pastor asks how you use AIAI Use and Transparency Statement · Responsible AI Check
When you're not sure whether you can upload that octavoScores, Texts and Copyright
When a new AI tool launches next monthNew-Tool Protocol · Tool Landscape, updated every quarter
When the course is over and you wonder what's next90-Day Plan
What you might actually use it for
Real work,
Real work,
from real rehearsal rooms.
Turn a semester of rehearsal notes into patterns you can actually see.
Reverse-engineer a past concert to understand why the program worked.
Treat your music library as information you can search and plan from.
Pressure-test a concert theme before you commit to it.
Draft family and singer communication that sounds like you, from three things you've already written.
Set up one workspace for concert communication so you stop re-explaining your program every time.
Compare several ways to introduce a musical concept before you walk into the room.
Build a repeatable process for auditions, tours, recruitment, or concert logistics.
And sometimes the right answer will be: don't use AI for this.
Six modules, at your own pace
How the course moves.
Each module is about forty-five minutes of short video lessons, plus one assignment that leaves you with something you'll use.
00
Take stock
Before We Start
How the course works, what it is not, and a short AI Audit of where AI already shows up in your week.
01
Understand it
AI Foundations for Musicians
What AI is, what it doesn't have, why a neural network works like a choir, and why a musician was there at the start.
02
Talk to it
The Prompt Ladder
Why output looks generic and how to fix it. The five rungs, the SCORE Check, and the Meta Prompt, back in the rehearsal room.
03
Ground it in your own information
Your Own Information
You are already surrounded by data. Put your rehearsal notes, library, and programs to work, and see why the bigger opportunity isn't generation.
04
Question it
Ethical AI Use and Critical Thinking
Privacy, fairness, transparency and accountability. FERPA and approved tools. Scores, texts and copyright. Where your judgment stops and governance starts.
05
Configure it
From Chat to Handoff
When a chat should become a Project, how to make it sound like you, how to build a small tool and connect it, and how to hand work off with guardrails.
06
Make it yours
Your AI Practice
The information you've never been able to study, how to judge any new tool, why music generation is a different problem, and your capstone.
You don't finish with more AI knowledge. You finish with your own way of working with AI.
Enroll now — $197
Self-paced · Lifetime access · No live sessions to schedule around
Module 4 is not an afterthought
Use AI responsibly,
Use AI responsibly,
without becoming afraid of it.
Most AI courses add ethics at the end. This one teaches it as a skill, in the middle of the course, where it shapes everything after it.
And you'll write your own AI Use and Transparency Statement, rather than borrowing someone else's blanket rules.
Enroll — $197
Module 4 is open from day one, not locked behind the first three.
- You're curious about AI but don't know where to begin.
- You already use AI and know you're barely scratching the surface.
- You want practical applications without giving up artistic or professional judgment.
- You want frameworks that stay useful when the tools change.
- You need to think through responsible use in a school, university, church, or community setting.
- You want 500 copy-and-paste prompts so you never have to think again.
- You want AI to make artistic decisions for you.
- You want predictions about which tool will “win.”
- You want a technical programming course.
Your instructor
Why I'm the one teaching this.
I'm not an AI engineer teaching musicians. And I'm not a conductor who discovered ChatGPT last month.
My work has lived where choral conducting, teaching, business, and applied AI meet. So this course isn't built around what AI companies say these tools can do. It's built around what conductors actually need to do.
Beth Philemon · Founder, ChoirBaton
- MM in Choral Conducting
- National Board Certified Teacher
- MBA
- 15+ years conducting in school, university, church, and community settings
- AI transformation strategy for enterprise technology companies
What's included
The course
Six modules of short video lessons, about forty-five minutes each, plus Before We Start and a permanent Toolkit. One assignment per module and copyable prompts throughout.
The toolkit
All twenty-three handouts in one place, including a Tool Landscape that's updated every quarter so it stays current.
How it works
Everything opens the moment you enroll. No cohort and no schedule. Lifetime access.
Get all of it — $197
One-time payment · Lifetime access
Questions
Before you enroll.
Do I need a tech background?
No. Curiosity and a willingness to try things is the whole prerequisite. The course is built for conductors, not technologists.
Which AI tool do I need?
Claude is the main tool we work in, and its free tier is enough to start. The frameworks transfer if you'd rather use ChatGPT or Gemini, because the course teaches the architecture, not the brand.
Is there a prompt library?
There are copyable prompts in the lessons where they help. But the course teaches the skill of writing them, because a list goes stale and a skill doesn't.
Does this work for my context — school, church, or community choir?
Yes. It's built for directors in all of those settings, and Module 4 speaks directly to how data and approved-tools rules differ between them.
What about student data and privacy?
Module 4 covers exactly this: what to put into an AI tool, what to keep out, FERPA and the approved-tools rule, and how to write a transparency statement you can defend to a parent, a colleague, or an administrator.
Is every video finished?
Not yet, and you should know that before you enroll. Every lesson, handout, and assignment is in place. Video is being released module by module, and each one appears in your course the moment it's done. You pay once and get all of it.
I don't have time for one more thing.
Each module is about forty-five minutes of video plus one short assignment, on your own schedule, with no live sessions. What you build pays that time back in rehearsal prep and admin work you're no longer doing twice.
Start when you're ready
You don't need to become
You don't need to become
an AI expert.
You do need enough understanding to decide how these tools belong in your work. Basics to Breakthroughs gives you that foundation, and a practical way to keep building from it.
