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Learn How to Play Piano, Not What to Play – a conversation with Patrick Boylan
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Patrick Boylan is a professional pianist and a founder of Muselow an App that promises to get people playing piano in seven minutes.
In this episode of the Abecederwork life balance podcast Rest and Recreation Patrick tells host Michael Millward about being a professional pianist in Los Angeles California USA. That freelance career was only possible because of the unconventional way in which Patrick taught himself to play piano.
Now Patrick with his co-founders have built Museflow an App that teaches people how to play the piano by teaching practical playing techniques.
Patrick eloquently explains the how Museflow achieves this the success that learners are achieving.
Rest and Recreation is made on Zencastr, because creating podcasts on Zencastr is so easy.
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr use our offer code ABECEDER.
Thank you to the team at Matchmaker.fm for introducing me to Patrick. Matchmaker.fm is where great hosts and even greater guests are matched, and fantastic podcasts are hatched. Use code MILW10 for a discount on membership.
Travel
Patrick is based in Los Angeles California. Members of The Ultimate Travel Clubtravel to the USA and everywhere else at trade prices. Use our offer code ABEC79 to receive a discount on club membership.
Visit Abecederfor more information about Michael Millward, and Museflow.ai and Patrick Boylan.
Rest and Recreation listeners get 50% off Muselow for life, visit Museflow.ai and use offer code REST50
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Being a Guest
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Rest and Recreation' Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencaster. Hello and welcome to Rest and Recreation, the work-life balance podcast from Abysida. I'm your host, Michael Millward, Managing Director of Abysida.
Revolutionizing Piano Learning with Patrick Boylan
00:00:19
Speaker
Today, i am going to be finding out how Patrick Boylan, the founder of Newsflow, revolutionized how people learn to play piano and how that might change how we all learn everything and anything.
00:00:34
Speaker
As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, rest and recreation is made on Zencastr. Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform on which you can make your podcast in one place and then distribute it to the major platforms like Spotify, Apple, Amazon, and Google YouTube.
00:00:55
Speaker
Zencastr really does make making content so easy. If you'd like to try podcasting using Zencastr, visit zencastr.com forward slash pricing and use my offer code, Abysseedah.
00:01:09
Speaker
All the details are in the description. Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencastr is for making podcasts, we should make one. One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading, and subscribing to.
00:01:24
Speaker
As with every episode of Rest and Recreation, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
Patrick Boylan's Journey and MuseFlow's Origin
00:01:33
Speaker
Today's rest and recreation guest who I met on matchmaker.fm is musician.
00:01:41
Speaker
He plays the piano. He's a pianist and he is the founder of MuseFlow, an app. He is Patrick Boylan. Hello, Patrick. Hey, how you doing?
00:01:52
Speaker
I'm extremely well. Thank you very much. And I hope you can say the same. I can say the same. It's a beautiful day in Los Angeles, California. Yeah, I was going to say that you you're joining me from Los Angeles, California, but you're originally from Chicago in Illinois.
00:02:06
Speaker
Yes, sir. I visited both cities. I was in Chicago for a very short space of time. And when I went to Los Angeles, nobody made me a star. So i decided to leave. hu I mean, it happens, you know.
00:02:20
Speaker
It does. It happens. It happens. I'm sure it happens. yeah But I have visited both, and when I go again, i will make my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club, because that is where I can access trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, holidays, and all sorts of other travel-related purchases.
00:02:37
Speaker
You can access the same trade prices on travel by joining the Ultimate Travel Club. There is a link and a membership discount code in the description. Now that I've paid some bills, let's make a podcast.
00:02:52
Speaker
Patrick. Please could we start by you giving us a little bit of an introduction into your career to date and how you ended up discovering this this new way of learning to play piano. Yeah, I'm a professional pianist here in Los Angeles. I got a couple of gigs that I that i play at. And, um you know, like I taught myself how to play piano all those years ago.
00:03:12
Speaker
And it's a different way than most people learned. I thought it was very interesting that I could actually make it into a job. And I was very lucky that I did. And so here I am, and i was one of the it was just one of those things. I was like thinking one day, and I'm like, what if there's a way to port over the way that I taught myself how to play piano?
00:03:30
Speaker
What if there's a way to port it over into an app and distribute that to the populace? And so here we are a couple years later. Newsflow is a thing, and people are using it and loving it. And slowly but surely, revolutions don't happen overnight.
00:03:42
Speaker
Humbly, I say. This is the revolution for music education and we're very excited to see it. Right. So when you say you've got a couple of gigs, you're like a fabulous baker boy. Yeah. ah yeah I play over at a piano bar in Hollywood.
00:04:01
Speaker
I've got a couple of background jazz gigs. I play for a couple different karaoke spots, not karaoke spots, sorry, cabaret spots. um And I play auditions around town as well. And so, you know, a bunch of jobs, freelancer.
00:04:14
Speaker
So I've got a bunch of different streams of income, bunch of different places that I play. But my main place is that it's that piano bar that I play at, that I love. I play there every weekend and I'm such a fan. So do we give it a plug?
00:04:29
Speaker
ah Sure. I mean, Tramp Stamp grannies, man. If you're ever in l L.A. and you want to experience a very weird niche piano bar, go to Tramp Stamp. Highly recommend it. I love playing there. The crowd is awesome.
00:04:41
Speaker
It's like this musical theater, Disney, pop rock, millennial stuff. a piano bar. Sounds great. it's a blast and a half if you like, you know, classic millennial songs like, you know different artists like My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Britney Spears, NSYNC, like those kind of nostalgic...
00:05:04
Speaker
ah tunes and bands that that we knew. Los Angeles is a huge, huge city. Which part of Hollywood and what's the road of that way we can find this bar? Tramp, Stamp, Granny's. It's on the corner of Coenga and Hollywood.
00:05:20
Speaker
that's that So it's right in the heart of Hollywood. Great. You learned to play piano in a particular way.
Challenges with Traditional Piano Lessons
00:05:26
Speaker
And I think there was a reason why you learned to play piano and why You kept up with the old traditional ways of doing it, isn't there? Yeah, I took eight years of regular traditional piano lessons and I hated every minute of it.
00:05:40
Speaker
My mind didn't work with the way that, you know, the normal way that people are taught how to play. Okay. You probably experienced it yourself if ever you took private lessons for any instrument.
00:05:52
Speaker
The way that it works is like your teacher gives you a new skill, whether that's a new note a new rhythm, and then gives you a couple of songs to go practice at home for a week. And then you have to perfect it.
00:06:03
Speaker
And then you come back and your teacher either checks that as correct or says, no, you have to go home and practice that exact same song again. to perfection. That didn't work for me. Of course, I recognized in retrospect why it didn't work for me.
00:06:16
Speaker
But in the moment, I was just simply very flustered and frustrated and then also very bored. Like it was both of those things combined. I was very frustrated, but I was also simultaneously very bored because I was repeating the same phrases over and over and over.
00:06:29
Speaker
I was repeating the same music over and over and over. But I was frustrated because i was only learning that one specific skill in the context of that one specific song.
00:06:41
Speaker
So it wasn't proper cumulative learning. I was just learning those songs at
Innovative Methods of MuseFlow
00:06:46
Speaker
that point. I wasn't learning the foundational skills that were necessary to play piano.
00:06:52
Speaker
So that makes sense? Yes, it makes an awful lot of sense. As a commercial trainer and business trainer, of things that I've always remembered is a quote I was given about Albert Einstein, where someone had asked him, how do you know so much? How can you possibly know so much? and he said, I know nothing at all.
00:07:11
Speaker
He didn't know his times tables, but he knew the process to work it out. And he'd focused on remembering how to do things rather than what to do. Love that.
00:07:22
Speaker
That's a perfect comparison. Yeah. You learn a musical instrument. I'm from Yorkshire. So we have a big brass brand tradition. So learning in in school a musical instrument was tenor horn. If you're learning the same phrases and music on a piano, it's your fingers that ache, but when you're doing it on a brass instrument, it's your lips. It's your mouth that hurts. you Yeah.
00:07:42
Speaker
Yeah. And it's like you're holding this thing and doing the same things to get the right type of transition between different parts of music. But you end up with, at the end of it, you've got one song, one piece of music that you can play.
00:07:56
Speaker
Then you have to start learning another piece of music. Whereas what you're saying is like with the Einstein, it it's not the learning of a specific piece of music that is important, but learning the techniques that enable you to play that piece of music.
00:08:08
Speaker
Yes, exactly. and I'd like to get back to the basics and I'd like to learn the foundational skills to be able to play those songs in an engaging way. there There really aren't any other ways to do that except to learn songs. What is the vehicle, right, for the curriculum?
00:08:24
Speaker
That's the question that MuseFlow answers in a different way than traditional lessons. The songs aren't the vehicle for the curriculum. What we use instead is what's called sight reading, the act of reading music at first sight.
00:08:38
Speaker
So we teach you how to play. you teach We teach you how what how music is written and where your hands are supposed to live on the keyboard. We teach you that in seven minutes, if you don't already know. And then we give you your first three your first note with three rhythms, and we just we send you on your way.
00:08:54
Speaker
And we give you music that never repeats. You're consistently working at trying to figure out, but you're not memorizing by rote. You have to be able to play that skill, that new note, in music that is presented to you that never repeats.
00:09:10
Speaker
We've gamified it, so they have to get four phrases in a row at 95% accuracy at the goal tempo to be able to pass a level. There you go. You've successfully learned that new skill. Incrementally, adding a new note, adding a new rhythm. We slowly but surely, each level, we add a new note, add a new rhythm, add a new time signature, add a new concept.
00:09:28
Speaker
Like how to move ah move about the keyboard properly with your different fingers and positions and all that stuff. Slowly but surely building you that way. And then once you've learned a new skill, songs get unlocked at the end of each level so that you can go apply those skills.
00:09:43
Speaker
So we're adding a new step basically before songs because we realize that songs are not the best vehicle to learn the new skills. I'm ah i'm in a perfect example of that.
00:09:54
Speaker
How did you discover this different approach? Well, it's kind of based off of the way that I taught myself. So I took eight years of lessons and I hated every minute of it. I was a terrible student, but my teacher just retired.
00:10:06
Speaker
And so then I was like, do I want to get back into lessons? No, I don't. i don't want to find another one. I'm super burnt out with the process. So I ended up just going back to my parents' sheet music that they had. They had a bunch of musical theater scores.
00:10:17
Speaker
I took a little bits out of that. I took a little motif or something, a little melody. I just was like, oh, I really like that. Or I took a little pattern, something like in my in my fingers that I really enjoyed.
00:10:30
Speaker
And then what I did was improvised around those little patterns, putting them in different musical contexts and So that really fleshing it out so that if I ever saw actually another version of that phrase or motif or pattern in a different song, I actually was able to replicate it.
00:10:49
Speaker
So I was learning the core building blocks, those different patterns, though different those different melodies. I was learning them inside of improvisations. That was my vehicle for my curriculum.
00:11:01
Speaker
It was those improvisations. And so cut to college, I was able to play ah a bunch of different like all these different pieces that people were throwing in front of me because I was the only acting major that could play piano.
00:11:14
Speaker
All of these musical theater students were throwing music in front of me being like, I want to practice this. i want to practice this. want to practice this. And I could play it because I had learned the foundations of what made up that type of music.
00:11:26
Speaker
I had learned it in in this sort of improvisation sort of way that was very immersive. And i learned it kinesthetically instead of with traditional lessons, you just simply have to replicate it. on so you have You learn it by rote in one song and you you don't really know how to apply it to other songs. you know So I learned it in a much more foundational way is is what I realized. You take the skill and the knowledge that you need and learn it without the restriction of
00:11:56
Speaker
ah particular environment, the environment being a song. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. I'm thinking that you can learn anything if you understand what you're trying to do, but I'm imagining you sitting at the piano with the musical score for a Broadway musical in front of you and looking for the bits that you know how to do, and then looking for the bits that you know 90% how to do, and gradually building up your ability to play the score by reinforcing the positives and then stretching yourself with the the other bits.
00:12:33
Speaker
that That means that if you're learning a new song in a traditional way, your one note followed by another note followed by another note without actually creating a tune, so to speak.
00:12:45
Speaker
One finger, one finger, one chord. It takes a while to build up the actual melody with all those things. But because you're using the the parts that you know,
00:12:57
Speaker
you know how to do, you can match the what you see on the page, you can match that to what you know how to do. You actually get the tune quicker than if you're learning it the old by rote way.
00:13:11
Speaker
100%. One of our co-founders never touched a keyboard in his life. And he we were on screen one day, he was ah we were on a video call, and he was he just beat level 15 of Muse Flow.
00:13:23
Speaker
Never touched a keyboard in his life, beat level 15. You're like, wow, amazing. So he was he then went into the repertoire section and says, okay, great, I want to try it i try one of these songs. I've never played it before. He tried one of the songs that was unlocked at level 15,
00:13:36
Speaker
And he played through it, straight through, at goal tempo, messing up so much. The dude was messing up constantly. and he And he got to the end of it, though. he He didn't stop. He didn't clam up or anything like that. He actually just continued all the way to the end with a smile on his face.
00:13:54
Speaker
And he had a great time. He said, oh, my God, that was so awesome. That's a great song. And you look at his accuracy, and it's 40% accuracy. He got 40% of that song correctly. Not even half of it And then what he did was... but he had a great time. He he he had a great time.
00:14:09
Speaker
He played it again. And he got 85% accuracy. The second time he played it. The third time he got 98% accuracy, and the fourth time he got it 100% accurate.
00:14:22
Speaker
He learned that song so much faster because he had learned all of the skills that were necessary to play that song. He learned those skills outside of the contexts of songs so that by the time he saw a song that used all those different skills, he was able to play it.
00:14:41
Speaker
It only took him four times to repeat it, 100% correct. That would have taken a student an entire week or two of multiple hours of practicing that piece if you learned in the traditional way.
00:14:54
Speaker
So what we're trying to do is increase the floor of your ability to play at first sight. We want to increase that floor so that by the time you get songs that are at that level, you'll be able to practice it so much faster and perfect it so much faster in a much more enjoyable way.
00:15:09
Speaker
That's the goal of Muselope. You're not focusing on the outcome as such. You're focusing on developing the skills which will enable you to achieve an outcome within four sessions, four attempts.
00:15:23
Speaker
But you're focusing on developing the skills that enable you to do that rather than on trying each time to get somebody to replicate something that they've heard.
00:15:36
Speaker
ah like These are the skills you need. in order to do this job. These are the skills that you need in order to play a particular piece of music. Develop those skills, which are the way in which you move your fingers around the keyboard, and that will enable you to play the song that much quicker.
00:15:54
Speaker
100%. Exactly. almost wish I had a keyboard in front of me now. Well, how does MuseFlow work? How does it get the information about what it is that you are playing to tell you how accurate you are? How do you connect?
00:16:08
Speaker
your piano to MuseFlow?
Technical Challenges and Future of MuseFlow
00:16:10
Speaker
Right now you have to have a laptop or a computer and you have to use ah the browser Chrome or Edge. they Right now we have a ah couple of technical limitations.
00:16:22
Speaker
What's crazy is that we have a decent chunk of users. like we're We're not completely new and this is a technological barrier that people aren't willing to overcome. What's wild is like people have all of this instrument, all of this, all this technical stuff already, right?
00:16:37
Speaker
Computer, Chrome, and you need a MIDI compatible keyboard, MIDI, music information, digital digital interface, MIDI is the is the type of data that a keyboard can produce. is That is a pitch.
00:16:51
Speaker
If you play a note, you hold it down for a certain duration. So we've got pitch. We've got duration. We've got what is called velocity, which is how hard you hit that note, which then directly ah translates to volume.
00:17:04
Speaker
So you've got pitch, duration, volume. You've also got sustain. Like you've got a sustain pedal down below in a piano that sustains a note even if you let it up. You've got sustain information that is passed through MIDI and a bunch of other stuff. Okay.
00:17:19
Speaker
But those are the ones that ah that we mainly focus on. We've got pitch, duration, sustain, and velocity. Those are the main ones that are captured. And so you have to have a MIDI compatible keyboard that hooks into your laptop right now.
00:17:34
Speaker
We're lowering those barriers to entry as we speak. We're building the app, which is going to be tablet and mobile compatible so that and you can then use your tablet or your phone, right? But then you would still have to have your keyboard connected to it. So what we're also doing is building out and fleshing out ah audio recognition algorithm so that the goal here is to be able to put your phone or your tablet on your acoustic piano, like your upright piano, or your keyboard, and not even have to jack it in It'll just listen to your keyboard through the speakers that your keyboard has or through the actual hammers hitting the string of the acoustic piano.
00:18:12
Speaker
That's where we're going to. But right now, yeah, you do have to. There's a couple technical limitations here. So at the moment, if someone who wanted to use MuseFlow, they don't they'd have to have access to one of these electronic keyboards that could be wired into MuseFlow.
00:18:28
Speaker
Yeah, into your browser. You would go to the website, which is museflow.ai, and you start your free trial from there. The app itself is on a subdomain called, it's right now we're still technically in beta mode, beta.museflow.ai. Soon enough, it'll be app.museflow.ai.
00:18:46
Speaker
And, uh, and yeah, you can start from there, sign up, try it out. Yeah. If you're, if you're interested in learning like piano in a different way, if traditional list lessons never worked for you, that's, those are the people that we're trying to really have conversations with. And I'm honored to say that we've had some amazing conversations with some of our, with some of our users that I just, I think it's I'm honored.
00:19:10
Speaker
I'm honored, humbled, and I love it. I love that we're making, democratizing music education. You know, that's one of the big tenets of Muslo. Yeah, I think there's a whole more than one generation of people who went in the generation that would automatically learn to play the piano because there was would have been at a certain time a piano in the house that was a main source of entertainment for people who were perhaps growing up in the, in the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, maybe even the nineties and beyond getting access to a major musical instrument like a piano.
00:19:53
Speaker
was not really something that a lot of people had. So whilst you say that if traditional music lessons, piano lessons didn't work for you, then MuseFlow is for you.
00:20:06
Speaker
I think you're probably going to have an awful lot of people who never had the opportunity to learn to play the piano, but have always hankered after it a little bit. and now they're independent adults and got the the room at the in the house and you don't need to have a a baby grand piano, you can have a keyboard.
00:20:28
Speaker
ah think you'll find an awful lot of people and that who've never touched a piano before, never played a keyboard, never attempted to learn, actually interested in in this approach as well.
00:20:41
Speaker
Definitely. We have a decent chunk of people that are exactly that. They've always been discouraged by the where do i start? sort of mentality. Do I have to have private lessons to really learn?
00:20:52
Speaker
What about these other apps? Like they don't give me a clear starting point and it's always very complicated and annoying to be able to start those. No, we give you a very clear directive. This is where you start, depending on where you're at.
00:21:04
Speaker
Like some, a lot of people have a lot of piano experience already. They know how to read music. ah They know where their hands are supposed to be placed. Great. Start later in the curriculum. We've soft unlocked everything so that you can go into their curriculum and just play any level you want and find where you should start.
Engaging Users and Future Features
00:21:24
Speaker
you know um So if you don't know anything, start at level zero.
00:21:28
Speaker
Learn how to play the piano in seven minutes and then go into level one. Learn how to play your first note and how to do it in time. And the cursor will continue over that music until you get 95% accuracy at the gold tempo.
00:21:41
Speaker
And then you've successfully passed that level. Oh my gosh, let's do the next one. You know, totally depends on the person where to start. But if you're interested, like, yeah, you can start wherever you'd like, depending on your level of expertise.
00:21:55
Speaker
Yeah. You don't need to be a maestro or a particularly musical person to learn to play the piano, do you? it It is something that lots of people can do. it's There's no reason why not.
00:22:06
Speaker
It's also one of those things that's like learning to play an instrument was never fun. We never made it enjoyable to a point of like, well, why not just engage with the process of learning something new?
00:22:18
Speaker
I want to engage with the process of learning something new because I find the process enjoyable. No, it was never that for thousands of years. And here we are now trying to make it more fun by engaging you in what is called flow state, the act of being engaged in something important.
00:22:37
Speaker
you're at that right level where your skill meets the challenge. We want to keep you in that pocket so you're just engaged for a decent chunk of time.
00:22:47
Speaker
We have people that are playing for 30 minutes to two hours a day. It's like a, it's a video game. It gets addictive and you enjoy the process of just simply playing all of this music that's directly in front of you that never repeats.
00:23:02
Speaker
You get into that flow. I see it's a yeah you can play the games and very often it's like you've played the game, so what? You don't come away from it with any anything other than in that moment you've either lost or you've won or you've been somewhere in between. right And yet there's a huge like psychological, emotional, emotional,
00:23:24
Speaker
benefit for our mental health in actually learning a new skill. Yeah. It's, it's, it's an amazing thing. And what we try to do is capture that aha moment. I don't know if you've ever have you recognized this moment, Michael, where you like, you, you can actually feel yourself learning something and, and under, and like rocking it, like really, truly getting the concept of, of it before. Like I consider that to be like an aha moment, right.
00:23:49
Speaker
Of like, Oh my gosh, I get it. Like, I actually understand what you're that kind of, have you ever had those moments before? I have, but it happens in all sorts of different environments where you just think like, oh, I didn't know that. And yeah, I, yeah, I, that aha moment of, of learning something new is, is, is quite something.
00:24:08
Speaker
Yeah. So that's what we're trying to give to you over and over and over each level. You should be having an aha moment of, oh my gosh, I'm getting it. I'm actually getting it. And then you pass the level, you know, and then the dopamine hit happens and all of that.
00:24:25
Speaker
That's that flow state. And that's that we're trying to capture those moments and give them to you on repeat. It's a very subtle thing. But once you recognize those moments, you're literally going to start to feel yourself learning something.
00:24:38
Speaker
It's an incredible feeling. It really, really is. It's addictive, isn't it? It's totally addictive. And it's so gratifying, too, because you're not just mindlessly playing a video game. You're actually learning something new. It's incredible. So I love it. I think there is something to this sort of edutainment, which is what we call it.
00:24:56
Speaker
It's entertaining, but you're also learning something. We have a user that that uses MuseFlow just to find that feeling. ah Very specifically find that flow state and find those aha moments because it centers him.
00:25:13
Speaker
It gives him a sense of purpose and transitions him from a very, very intense work. His work is very intellectually draining and and very...
00:25:24
Speaker
but also very dull at certain points. It's a very, he doesn't like what he does, but he he has to do it, right? And so yeah he this what he uses MuseFlow to do is transition him from that work mindset into being present and being present able to engage with his family after a hard day's work so what he does every time every every day be after after work is he goes into his closet when he gets home and he sits there with muse flow and it centers him and it makes him present and it allows him to fall into flow state for 30 minutes a day and then he's able to be with his family and like in a fundamental way so that he's not distracted by work you know it's a it's a way to pivot
00:26:09
Speaker
He's trained his brain. I find that utterly fascinating. And I love that Muse Flow can be that for him. you know i i find it fascinating as well, but I totally understand where he's coming from, that his brain is so full of one sort of information that he needs to do something different to flush all of that out.
00:26:30
Speaker
And so that his brain can then be a different environment, a different environment. part of his brain is able to be him for his family, for him as well.
00:26:42
Speaker
And when you say he goes into his closet to do this, and but we're talking about American closets and and huge, great big things probably. But walk-in wardrobes is what we would call Walk-in wardrobes. Sure, sure, sure.
00:26:56
Speaker
I also see like learning to play an instrument that is a standalone instrument, like a guitar, banjo piano is a social thing as well, isn't it? Very much so.
00:27:06
Speaker
It brings families together. It brings people together. It's collective experience. even though one person may be at the keyboard, everyone can get involved in it. The goal with Muse Flow is to be able to get you to be a point of proficiency where people can throw music in front of you and you can just play it.
00:27:24
Speaker
And we're getting we're getting there. Unit one is already created. That's 26 levels. That gives you 14 notes in the key of C major and with four or four different rhythms and three different time signatures. So it gets you a decent chunk.
00:27:39
Speaker
It really does. And you can play songs like Piano Man by Billy Joel. My point is, is that you get to a place where where you can actually sit down at the piano and people throw music in front of me and you can play it. You know, I think ah a big goal for a lot of people when they want to play something to kind of drive towards is...
00:27:58
Speaker
I want to be able to play the piano there during holidays. I want to be able to play music that that people want to hear. And i want to do that for people. I want to entertain in a very private, very specific environment where your family is around or your friends are around and people maybe want to sing and gather around you. And you're kind of the center of attention, but it's also facilitating this communal aspect.
00:28:23
Speaker
That's a big thing that we want to get you to. you know we want to get you to a place where you can sit down at the piano and people throw music in front of you and you play. and you say people can throw music at you and you can play it, how well would MuseFlow prepare you for someone saying, this is my favorite song.
00:28:42
Speaker
Do you know it? Could you play it? Without the sheet music, would is that something that goes beyond where MuseFlow is? or Or because you're learning the skills and the techniques and the way in which notes work together, it makes me feel that MuseFlow would enable you, if you know the tune, you'd be able to pull things together.
00:29:01
Speaker
There is something that we are trying to do that is... that is a little separate than that. We are trying to, right now at least, teach you how to read music, right? Instead of being able to listen to a song by ear and then play it, you are gonna get more adept to moving about the keyboard and adjusting your hands on the fly and playing things at will. Yes, yes, yes, yes, of course.
00:29:28
Speaker
The skill of listening to a song and then replicating that on the piano is a very specific skill. We call that ear training. you know we You can hear something and then replicate it that that is a That is something we will be exercising later down the road with certain ear training exercises inside of our exercise library.
00:29:49
Speaker
We're building that out as we speak. That, that yes, of course, later down the road, That will be something that we very much tackle. But right now, I think that there's no... We're definitely teaching elements of that, right?
00:30:04
Speaker
We're teaching elements of being able to play the piano at will. You know, um you'll be able to move about the keyboard much better, much more deftly, much more proficiently than you would otherwise, because you're not even thinking about it at the point.
00:30:19
Speaker
It gets it becomes second nature to you being able to move about that, about the keyboard. It totally becomes second nature and it just is a part of your body. You're not even thinking about it at the time. So yes, elements of that, though not fully fleshed out. Right, okay.
00:30:33
Speaker
You started this because you were bored and weren't having much success with the traditional approach. I'm thinking that there might be someone who's wasn't bored with the traditional approach, has learned how to play, has a repertoire of music, but actually is frustrated by the limitations.
00:30:53
Speaker
If they could play the piano and they came to MuseFlow, would it work for them as well? This kind of gets into an interesting sort of mentality. People have learned how to practice specific songs.
00:31:07
Speaker
they haven't learned how to learn songs. It's a very interesting sort of situation here with music that like, you might not really know how to do the actions that you're supposed to be doing, but you can learn a specific song. It's it's a very, because then the knowledge of how to play it is embedded within the sheet music itself.
00:31:27
Speaker
And it's only connected to the sheet music. It's not connected to the kinesthetic understanding of the skills that are necessary to perform that piece. Does that make sense? Yes. There's two different ways that you can learn a piece.
00:31:39
Speaker
One is by rote memorization and connecting everything to that one specific piece. The other way, which is the way that we're teaching, is learn the skills necessary to play that song and then just simply go play that song.
00:31:54
Speaker
It's not rooted in rote memorization. It's not rooted in that specific song and the context of that specific song. No, no, no. We're teaching you the skills outside of it. So what you're going to get with people like that, that have learned specific songs that are very complicated, very complex, but they've never learned how to port it over the skills that are necessary to play those songs,
00:32:14
Speaker
into other contexts, what you're going to get is you're going to get a lot of people that are... It's actually really difficult for them to sight read. They're going to be able to only sight read music at a very low level because the gap between the threshold of them being able to play music at first sight and the gap between the between the threshold of... The other threshold that we talk about is...
00:32:36
Speaker
How difficult of a song can you practice and learn with an indefinite amount of practice? It's not an infinite amount of practice, of course. It's indefinite, right? Yes. what is that comp What is that complexity of a song?
00:32:49
Speaker
And then what is the complexity of a song that you can play at first sight? Once that gap widens too much... Joy of learning plummets, but that's what we see a lot with the situations that you're talking about.
00:33:01
Speaker
People that have learned specific songs itself, they're not going to be able to sight read at a high level. So they're going to have to start pretty, pretty low. They're going to have start, i don't know, at level four or five, just so they they just so they can learn the skills in a foundational way.
00:33:19
Speaker
And so that they can be cumulative, you know? So it's good it's ah it's a bit of a rub for a lot of people that only know these specific songs and who want to learn the skills that are necessary to play those songs.
00:33:30
Speaker
It's a bit of a rub for them. It's a pain point. They are frustrated by the fact that they can only sight read at a very, very low level because they never practice that skill. But if you if you persist and if you're okay with with that sort of threshold that you're at, if you're okay with that,
00:33:47
Speaker
then 100% you're going to learn how to play music in a much more fundamental and foundational level with MuseFlow than you did in the traditional way. it's It is one of those things that that we're realizing and that people are frustrated by that. yeah They're annoyed that they only can sight read at a very low threshold.
00:34:05
Speaker
you know One of our founders is a classically trained pianist, and he is one of those people. he learned really complex songs And that's the only thing that he can play, though.
00:34:18
Speaker
He can't play anything else. And so when he started sight reading, he was very frustrated by the fact that he could only sight read at a very low level. but he got he But he got past it. And he increased and he increased and increased.
00:34:30
Speaker
And now he's a better pianist for it because he can learn new songs faster because his sight reading ability is higher. Yes. So that's kind of where we're at. You know, it's a very interesting sort of situation. You're in a very exciting place with lots of advantages for all sorts of people, whether they can play the piano already or whether they're complete
Special Offers and Conclusion
00:34:50
Speaker
beginners. You are in a very exciting place and I can sense the excitement in your voice about it as well. but I think you've got some some offers to make it even more interesting for people, I think. haven't you
00:35:03
Speaker
Yes. I would love to offer you your audience a 50% off for life. yeah We're still growing. We're still building here. And the the user feedback relationship, that flywheel is fully engaged.
00:35:20
Speaker
We get feedback from our users. we We get a decent – we hear that certain a certain amount of users want this certain feature. right We immediately implement it. it's It's one of those things that is – it's the cyclical flywheel that we that we've engaged with our early adopters that you know they know that we're still growing. They know that we're still building.
00:35:43
Speaker
and and And so we want to offer those people an incentive to be a part of that community with us. um And so if you're interested in in being a part of that flywheel, if you're interested in just simply trying out the app, you don't have to communicate with us if you don't want to. You can just use the app, right? It's it's there. It's a full curriculum.
00:36:01
Speaker
You can absolutely, of course, still just use it and you don't have to communicate with us. But for the people that are that are interested in that, or, you you know, again, for the people that aren't, nonetheless, early adopters, your podcast, people that are interested in trying out MuseFlow, regardless of the amount of communication that they want, we'd love to offer you guys a 50% discount for life. So let's call it REST50.
00:36:22
Speaker
fifty Does that sound good? R-E-S-T-5-0. And you'll see that when you open up and you try you you start open you start your free trial. There's a place where you can put in a coupon code.
00:36:35
Speaker
Also, when you get to the paywall after the seven-day free trial, So you can try out Museflow for seven days for free, see if you like it. And if you do, you can also put it in when you get to that paywall.
00:36:46
Speaker
There's gonna be a coupon code ah place where you where you can type in rest 50 and that'll knock it off, knock off 50% off for life. That sounds great. Thank you very much. We're excited to hear what you think. Yeah, that is very generous. Thank you very much.
00:37:01
Speaker
Couple more questions. How old you have to be before you can use Museflow? We recommend people above eight years old. Eight years old? Because your hands like your your hands can only spread so far. Right.
00:37:15
Speaker
But that's the early threshold of like when you can actually start to learn how to play piano. Otherwise, your hands are getting in the way and you're limited by the amount that you can stretch, all that stuff. So eight okay plus years old, yeah.
00:37:27
Speaker
Brilliant. So from eight years old, MuseFlow, if you're interested in learning to play the piano, is something worth investigating. You know, Patrick, it's really been very, very interesting. I've learned, well, you've opened my eyes to it and I'm very grateful and thank you very much for that very generous offer for our audience as well.
00:37:49
Speaker
Of course. For the moment, thank you for helping me make such an interesting episode of Rest and Recreation. Absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. I love that i love this podcast. I think it's ah it's a really cool idea. Thank you very much. We need more tools to enjoy our recreation. We need that.
00:38:05
Speaker
Thank you very much. really appreciate your time today. It's been great. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida. In this episode of Rest and Recreation, I have been having conversation with musician Patrick Boylan, the founder of MuseFlow.
00:38:23
Speaker
You can find out more information about both of us at abbasida.co.uk. There is a link in the description. I must remember to thank the team at matchmaker.fm for introducing me to Patrick.
00:38:36
Speaker
If you are a podcaster looking for interesting guests, or if like Patrick, you have something very interesting to say, matchmaker is where matches of great hosts and even greater guests are made.
00:38:48
Speaker
There's a link to matchmaker.fm and an offer code in the description. I'm now going to check out MuseFlow on 3. That's because 3.0 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data.
00:39:01
Speaker
So on 3.0, I can wave goodbye to buffering. There is a link in the description that will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3.0 and the special offers available when you quote my referral code.
00:39:14
Speaker
so So that description is well worth reading. You will undoubtedly have enjoyed listening to this episode of Rest and Recreation as much as Patrick and I have enjoyed making it.
00:39:25
Speaker
So please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abysida is not to tell you what to think.
00:39:40
Speaker
but we do hope to have made you think. Until the next episode of Rest and Recreation, thank you for listening and goodbye.