The Sound of Gold interview with Popmatics

0:01 This program is designed to provide general information with regards to the subject matters covered. This information is given with the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial, legal counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek the services of competent professionals before applying or trying any suggested ideas.

0:51 Hi, welcome to the Sound of Gold. I am excited to be here with you today and I have some special guests that will be joining us. I just want to start. Off by saying, the sound of Gold. The reason why we are doing this, why I'm doing this is I am a musician, I am a music teacher, and I want to keep music alive. Music. Original music is not gosh. It's original pieces of music that we grew up with that we get to compose, that we get to put together. Is in the real We don't use technology. Well maybe I'm making myself old, but we don't use like the synthesizers, and we don't use.

1:34 The the looping. But I guess now with the new technology we do. And maybe I'm getting off on a confusing foot here, but I want to keep music alive. I want to keep music alive in the schools. I want to keep musical lives, for music alive, for students that want to learn instruments. I want to keep music alive for us musicians that want to go out and play at venues. I want to connect with venues and that have live music. I want to connect with schools and teachers. And that's what I do here to have this show. I get to connect with these great people and build bridges because that's. What we do. That's what relationships are. We build bridges and that's how we stay connected. And music is a beautiful way to keep us connected. So with that being said, as a musician and as a teacher, a lot of students that I have, a lot of friends that I have that are musicians, including myself, take lessons. Right So I've been playing for over forty five years.

2:39 Not to give my age away, and I did have a birthday yesterday, not to give my age away, but I still take lessons. It's not about learning something. I just I could be one hundred years old. I'm not a hundred, but I could be one hundred years old and I could still be learning something on my instrument, and with sound. Music is so important because there's so much to learn, it's never ending, and you and I get to inspire each other as musicians and as students and as teachers. We learn from each other. So while I have my foot in many doors, my main focus is on doing the best job that I can as a musician, playing my instrument, and learning from others who are more advanced than me or who know different perspectives.

3:30 So what I would like to say is that today my special guests are Popmatics, And if you haven't heard of Popmatics, Popmatics is a fabulous online school of thought. And school of training and. Teaching of how to approach specifically the piano and play songs and learn to play the keyboard in such different ways that I'm planning to take classes, and I'm not just saying that. So we have Tony Parla Piana, who is the founder, and we have Angela who I want to say Sanchez, but I'm not saying her last name, right, I know that, But I know Angela's here with us and Tony will be joining us shortly.

4:18 Angela, are you on Sanbi? Are you sitting in with us? There? You are Hey, I think I'm here. Now, how do I say your last name? Is that Sanchez? Yeah, it's Senwich, So nobody can say it right the first time, but I always say it rhymes with spinach. I love it. You're so funny. So I was just kind of going off a little bit on how you know, as a musician, we're always learning and I've been playing a really long time and I still take lessons because it's like I learn from you and I learned from my students, and it's just it's a beautiful thing to be a student and to be a musician, because it's like never ending. It's not like, oh, okay, you know, I'm going to sign up and you know, be the president of this company, and then you get there you're like, okay, well you know that's it.

5:09 I'm here. No, It's like, as a musician, you're always growing and always evolving. And I love that. And I love what you and Tony put together because it's such a fun version of our perspectives. And I'm not going I'm gonna let you do the talking because I only know so much. But I love the both of you, and I love your approach and even okay, let's put that on hold even before we get there, tell me how you got involved, tell me what like your music history a little bit like what inspired your part of this. Yeah, I'm happy too, And and before I do, I will just say I love what you were saying at the beginning, because that's one thing that Tony and I both embrace very seriously in this program is that we are students first. So we have this program, we work with a lot of adults, but anything that we ask our students to do, we're doing too. And that kind of goes back to how I first met Tony because I was a student myself. Teaching piano was something that I've come to later in life. I always kind of taught my own boys. But my background in music. I did grow up in a musical family, musical parents. My sister is a singer songwriter. But my history was really just the classical piano for many many years, and I took lessons and did all the traditional route, and then it was kind of an on and off thing throughout my life. I always came back to it, but I always felt like I was missing something a little bit, the ability to sit down and improvise or play pop music, play from court charts, all those things. I could play

6:39 really wonderfully advanced classical music and all of that, but I wanted something different. And in twenty twenty, when the. World of music instruction opened up online, I started searching and all these wonderful courses and teachers and Facebook groups, and that's how I found Tony, the creator of Popmatics, and I started taking prime lessons with him, and I feel like that was really one of the first times a lot of just in my mind pieces were clicking together and I was starting to see things in new ways, and I kind of started my journey that I'm still on today. You know, I'm here, and there's a long ways to go, like you said, and it's it's wonderful that there is, because it's one of the funnest things I get to do in my life is just learning more and more about music. So I started studying with him, and then when he decided to start this online school.

7:28 I do also have a background in instructional design, so in my previous life, you know, I put together trainings for adults, so I'm able to kind of bring that skill in and helped him kind of take his methodology and ideas and together we built this online school. Oh great. Yeah, So with that being said, for our listeners that never heard of popmatics, that don't know anything about popmatics, what would be first of all, how do we reach you? Like, how do we find you on the web? Yeah, well it's very if you can just remember that pop like pop music and then Maddix like mathematics. So Popmatics you can go to our website, you can follow us on TikTok.

8:11 Those are kind of probably the two best places right now. But just look up our site or follow us on TikTok or YouTube were there as well? All the social platforms really. And what makes you? I know? But maybe our listeners don't know what makes popmatics? What what there? I find? There's a lot of distinguishable like little I can't okay, I'm not going. To talk for you. Tell us, tell us why popmatics stands out, tell us why why we would sign up for Popmatics, Like what's the approach? What's you know? What makes you your popmatics program different than just go into a regular teacher.

8:53 Yeah it is. It is a very unique method, so much so that sometimes when we try to explain it to people they don't even quite understand. It really takes being an immerse in it to see what it is. But I'll do my best just to kind of briefly explain it. So when you think about music as a language and how we learn languages by listening, hearing things, and then we start babbling if we're a baby, and we make sounds, and we literally want to do the same thing with music. So we spend a lot of time listening and then together kind of analyzing figuring out what we're hearing. We do kind of focus on pop music, but that's very broad, you know, anything that's been on the radio ever, you know, and we do a little bit of jazz and classical too.

9:35 But we start with listening and then we do a lot of creating, so you know, improvising can be an intimidating term. We call it creating, but it's very much like story based. We use a lot of kind visual prompts in stories. We don't obsess about letter names, we don't do a lot of note reading. We might bring those things in later, but to start, we try to build a very pure experience with you and your instrument, making sounds. Listening to them, making it simple enough that anybody could follow along, but people with more experience can do more with the instruction. So those are the two listening and creating or two of our class, you know, kind of themes. And then the third theme is understanding.

10:15 So we do believe that you can kind of you'll progress faster if you have some understanding and knowledge of what it is that you're creating and hearing in a shared vocabulary. But Tony's lessons. On understanding again, aren't like anything you've ever seen through his all of his years of private teaching. He has all of these creative concepts and ways to kind of dig down at the foundations. A lot of people start high with chords. We start much earlier on with patterns and keyboard recognition, and then we kind of work your way up and eventually we'll get to chords and we'll get to advanced harmony as well. But all kind of through this very unique lens that Tony has developed over his twenty years of private lessons with students. Nice that any question that did that answer your question?

10:57 Yes? And I don't know if this is maybe a habit of asking like too many questions in one sentence. So this might be too many questions, but I love copmatics approach because the. Many things that I've done and that I do and. I juggle, one of them is theater and film and so like anything in that genre, Like I know what it means. I understand it because I've been there. I had my foot in the door there. So I don't know if I'm giving away any secrets. But some of the things. That some of the ways that you guys teach deals with like point of view or like like stage like positions, and can you give us a little bit more on that because you'll.

11:43 Do better than me. That's such an interesting question. Yeah, and I've been sure if I know what you're referring to exactly. But was this from I know you've done, like some of our free workshops and our course, was there something well you were thinking about? Well free workshops? First off, thank you for reminding me. Do we have any free workshops coming up? We will be specually one soon. Yes. Right now, when we don't have a live one running, we've got like a video version that you can access from our website anywhere. So it's like a thirty minute condensed version and so that's available right now, and as soon as we get a free one in the next live one up, it'll be advertised on the site for sure. So we try to do them every now and then.

12:23 But got a lot of initiatives going on right now that we're struggling a lot of balls, but we will we will do one again, So get on our mailing list if you'd like to join one. But yeah, that we try to share in those just a little bit. Like I said, since we're so unique and that that free video class called it's called make music Easy. That's our tagline. We think that music should be easy. It shouldn't it should be something like this is kind of what you always demonstrate in your own music, Lisa. It can flow out of you effortlessly, and that's that's really Our goal is to get anyone who wants to experience that. I believe can experience that, and we can help you get there. Sure. Now, I guess I'm to be more general, and again I hope I'm not giving away secrets, but.

13:05 Like, no, it's okay, nothing that he mentions campfire. So I guess being that I have some acting in my in my world and in my whatever you call it when he goes campfire, like I'm thinking, my mind goes I'm sitting at the campfire, like I'm out there. And so like my mind just goes there. So then when I'm playing and thinking of campfire and I'm like going to different like regions of the piano and I'm going to different optaves in different sounds, like it's so like I feel like a kid. I have so much fun with it, and you know, like, yeah, I mean, I don't know if everybody has that same experience.

13:48 Who's who's taken like the campfire lessons, but it's so much fun. Are you Are we allowed to give away a little bit of that campfire like what I mean by that? Yeah, I mean of course, yeah, don't worry. There's nothing that no trade secrets. You can give away anything you want. But I mean, I do love what you said about feeling like a like a kit Like really that's our goal because children also naturally give an instruments. They just start playing and having fun. And you know, Campfire is the name of our kind of creating or improvising series, and it starts with ten lessons and then we build out from there. And those first that there is a campfire storyline, and so it's very story based, and we're collecting logs and here's our camp and here's our fire, and here's some sparks, and let's throw log that we use all of these metaphors and it is a wonderful image because it's got there.

14:40 We're kind of specifically tying some of these feelings and metaphors to notes and actions on the keyboard, but also just the spirit of the campfire and you know, this camaraderie and here we are together. There's a lot of other kind of side stories around that metaphor that that we just love. Okay, and then what about like I know with the ear training. Now I have musician friends that can play by ear it's no problem, but they can't read music. So then like someone like myself, I can read music, and then I could also compose my own stuff. But if you ask me to play by ear, like for me, that's work Like it just doesn't flow for me naturally. And I know I've taken some of your online classes where'll you'll Tony will pick an easy song and we'll listen to it. And then as I'm paying attention and understanding not overthinking.

15:31 It, I figure it out. So it's kind of like and I think I posted it a little briefly today in the introduction of today's show. And that's really kind of working with intervals, and I'm going theory based intervals where where you're. Just you know, forget the theory. Let's just have fun with this. So could you give us an example, maybe, like randomly, could we pick just like an easy song. Could you explain to our listeners what I'm talking about. I could try. Yeah, And well, so let me say instead of intervals, like I would say that we use the number system, okay, because you know, in the past people would say things like, oh, let's you know, get the sound of an interval in your head, and then every time you hear a fifth, you know, like use whatever your your song was, you know, tinkle twinkle, Okay, that's an interval, right, which is a musical distance. But the problem with just interval training, and this is for people with musical backgrounds, it's really hard when you're hearing a song and going very quickly to just slow down and isolate these intervals. But actually every note has a kind of a feeling based on where it is in the scale, and some people use sulfa, some people use numbers.

16:48 They're both good. We just use numbers in popmatics because that leads naturally into harmony. So even just to start with campfire, we always cam vampfire. It's too sound. And later you play with them first, but later you come to learn it's your one or your home or your tonic and your three those two notes. And the more you create with these sounds and then kind of bring in some awareness of where they are in the in the scale or the landscape as we call it, then when you hear that in a song, you'll start to recognize it. And so when you hear these patterns and melodies, you have to kind of go slow and work in tiny pieces at first. But you start with the melody, figure out where's your camp, where's your home, and then from there you can kind of put together the other numbers and draw a map of the song.

17:35 Then does that help? Yeah? Yeah, Now from what I know, and I don't know a lot, but from what I what I understand is when we work together or I will be like I said, I will be signing. Up for the like probably next month or something. And no joke I'm not saying that. We'd love to have you. Yeah, yeah, because I want to learn more from you guys. But you don't. You're not like, Okay, here's the sheet music. Like I've already taken lessons somewhere else and they're like, Okay, here's the sheet music. Work on like three intervals okay or three measures okay, and smooth it out, get it right. But you guys don't do that. You guys aren't like here's the sheet music. You guys are like, listen, listen to it, feel it, find it.

18:19 Kind of thing is. That we're always going to start from listening. Not that I mean many of our students can read music or want to learn to read music, right. It's not either or, but there's so many places out there that can teach you to read music. So we're trying to teach you the other side of the coin, how to slay what you hear and so, and we do this. We model it together. We have live classes and video lessons. We have listening classes every day and people will bring in songs or we have songs and we'll just model it with a little section of the song and you start with melody. That's the easiest thing for people to hear normally, and then as you get better with melody, you'll start hearing basslines, and then after that you'll start hearing chord quality, and then eventually additional details.

19:02 So this is a very staged thing. You're not going to come in and be able to analyze all the chords in a song the first day, but we start with small pieces of melodies and then work your way up. So when I started, I couldn't even really play a melody by ear. I could fumble around and find it, And now melody is easy, I can hear baselines, i can hear chord qualities, and then I'm starting to get kind of the more advanced details of listening. So basically by modeling and supporting students and helping them, it. Does take time. We make it easy, meaning it's fun and anyone can do it, but it does take time if you really want to develop that ear training fluency. So our program is designed to go over the course of a year.

19:44 Okay, you know you don't have to do it that way, but you know, we kind of say within a year you can have basic fluency, just as you could if you studied a language for a year. There's always there's no ceiling, but you could get comfortable. We have a student now who just said, wow, I heard a song down for thirty minutes, figured out the chords, and here it is. I'm playing it and I'm singing it. You know, that's kind of our goal for anyone in the program. And you I was actually like maybe reprimanding myself today a little bit because I think it's a practice. Well it was my birthday yesterday, but I think it's a practice this weekend. And I was like kind of like, you know, you did practice this weekend and we have. A class tomorrow, and I'm like going over in my head and I'm like, okay, miss teacher. I'm like, well, you get what you put you get what you put into it.

20:26 And then I'm like, okay, that's not fair. Like so you know, there there's no I learned this the other day or last week. There's really no balance, Like you know, we all have we're people, we're human, we're adults. We have so much responsibility, so much going. On that this is like and I remind my students this too. I should be nice to myself too and say, you know, it's yes, it's. What you put into it. But there's no like, there's no balance. It's a juggle and it's like how well can you juggle? Is what it comes down to. And so with being said, I love popmatics for the fact that it's just so much fun that it doesn't feel like, Okay, I have to go take out the trash kind of thing. It's just like, yay, I get to like escape my regular responsibilities, even for like fifteen minutes, just to sit down and play.

21:19 And I'm kind of going. Off a little bit, but I means as a student point of view, other than a teacher. I mean, how do you look at popmatics in that way? Yeah, it really does feel like play. Like I said, I had that classical background, and when you're working on a classical piece, you're very focused and you're using your mind a lot, and it's very technical. You're trying to get these technical movements in your hands. And with pop maatics, I just I could sit and just play for hours. It's almost like I have to make myself stop because it's just it's fun and relaxing. If I'm creating, if I'm figuring out a song in my ear, it feels like a puzzle. I don't get frustrated like I used to because I know I can go get help and I've got support and whatnot.

22:00 So it just feels that feels fun too. It all kind of feels like a game. And we do have a lot of busy adults in our program, so we have tried to make it where you can come in. We've got options for if you're really busy, just go watch this express video every week. If you have more time once a week to class, come every day to class. It's it's very much based around what you said. We all have different so sometimes we have busy weeks. Sometimes we have a lot of time, So we try to make it very flexible because we both have busy just like you busy schedules too. You know, I have a lot of my own personal music projects I'm trying to work on, you know, I like to write songs, I play in a band, I'm learning, you know, teaching, I.

22:41 Do all kinds of stuff. So it's a lot to balance, you know, and so we try to keep our program really flexible. Detour just a moment, Yeah, post a little bit about your band. Yeah, Well this is something that kind of opened up for me after I started doing pop maatics and well, I was in a band once before, I should say, with my sister, who's a singer song and I was like the classical piano. Blair who had no idea. I'm like, chords, what's the chord? What do I do? You know? But she was very patient with me, and I kind of made my way through it. But now that I have like a much better understanding of how to learn by listening and listen. A lot of what we do is listen to the different roles of instruments. So I joined a couple of cover bands and I'm in one of them now and it's just it's been a phenomenal experience just to get to work regularly with other musicians and play around town. So we do just all kinds of you know, everything from seventies up to modern music, so a little bit of everything. Try not to be just just songs that people like. And sometimes I'm emulating a keyboard part. Sometimes there is no keyboard part.

23:42 I'm just figuring out what's going to go with the sound that we're you know, our version of the song. So I mean pop Mannix has really helped because you know, you can pull up a chord chart, but it's not really going to show you what to do in a band, and a lot of times they're not even accurate. So you know, I kind of take this skin I've learned, and I can go and at least be sure about chords and strong structure and all that stuff. And then there's a little bit we talk a lot about a little bit of structure and a lot of freedom. Too much freedom is intimidating, and that's what our creating classes. There's enough structure that you're not intimidated, but then you can go and play like in the playground, and you know, the band is a little bit like that too for me. Now. So yeah, so. You play keyboards and do you sing as well?

24:25 Yeah? I play keyboards and I sing. We do a lot of harmonies together. I do lead on some of the songs. I'm kind of. Newer to singing, so that's one way I've been pushing myself lately is to sing a little more, and that's been really fun. Singing and playing is it's. So fun and a lot of people in our program I can't sing, or I don't have a good voice, but I do think anyone can sing, just like anyone can learn an instrument. We all have voices, we can all you know what I mean just about it. My mom was a choir director and she always believed that too. So and we've had students, so people told me I was tone deaf, and you know, but here they are. They they're not you know, and they're learning. So so using your voice is a powerful way to create. So whether you're a singer or not. Like just if you listen to Tony playing, he's always humming along and you know, singing through his imagination and then it reaches his fingers.

25:12 And I think I don't do it as much as he does, but it is. Our voice is a very powerful way to connect with basic I think I found. Since we're on the detour, I do my husband and I we run karaoke. We used to do every week, but we do so and that's this past year, in the past year and a half. That's been new for me, right because I sang as a kid, and I've taken singing lessons over the years. But I guess it's like like being afraid, like that fear, like you don't want to stand up and sing, but there's so much freedom when and there's so much connection. I'm still I have I'm like, I'm like right down here, I have like so far to go, but there's so much connection with being able to.

25:58 And I've also used. To take singing lessons and play, play and sing and that's really hard. But the connection. My point is, and again I have, I have a long way to go. My point is is that it's a completely different connection that you make with your instrument and with the song because you not only like form it to yourself. It's kind of like going to the store. And putting on a dress, or if you're a man, try it on slacks or something. Either they're gonna fit or they're too baggy. And you gotta go find ones that do fit. And the same thing for music and singing is like you find a way that it fits you, and there's the freedom and the beauty in it because you.

26:39 Don't tailor it to like Tailor. Swift or you know or whoever an artist you know, the popular artists out there. You tailor it to who you are. Because that's what makes it beautiful and that's what makes music. And a lot of my students, I call them magicians. I said, you are not only the musician, you are the magician because you're bringing it to life. You love it. We actually have we have some characters in our program. When you get into Deeper Love, we have a we do have a magician, which is a very specific note off the landscape, and I won't go into the details, but part of the story is the storytelling. But yeah, I believe that to everyone, it's it's your voice becoming what your voice is meant to be.

27:20 That that's why I think anyone can sing. Now. I can't sing like any of those people you mentioned. I just have to be comfortable, and a lot of people don't like the sound of their voice. But once you get through that and other people, you know it's And it's the same with the piano. Honestly, when you play this way without sheet music. Part one way to think of the journey is you're you're finding your voice and you'll see, like Tony will listen to something, I'm like, it's like, oh, I hear the w C. And I hear the Norah Jones, and I hear that. You know, all these influences. I don't consciously try to put those things in, but he'll hear them. And that's kind of what developing your own voice is. It's hearing all the things you like and then creating your own music and like, over time, your own kind of style or voice just evolves. It's very much a process, and I have a long way to go to kind of like you said, and the beauty.

28:07 Of popmatics also when I don't know if I had said this to Tony or you guys and one of the classes, or. Maybe I just thought it and I didn't speak it. If if you or I or any of our listeners out there were to take a crayon or a paint brush and just paint a picture, right, just like be. Creative and paint something. It comes out you don't like in the beginning, like okay, well you know, how is it going to be? And like how square is the table going to be? Or how square is the box going to be? And how you don't like you don't premeditate as an artist. You just like, yes, give me the paintbrush, give me the palette with the colors, give me you know, give me.

28:49 The canvas, and let me go. And that's the same thing with popmatics I find is that there's so much creativity in the teaching you got. I mean again, just my perception, it's almost like here's the paintbrush. I'm going to show you the palette that we're using and go off of that. Yeah, that's that's a great analogy. We actually have a an activity called restaurant creons. That's what he loves to it. I think you can probably find one on TikTok fairly recently. And it's like, again, it's a few notes, but they're all going to sound good together, and then he's like, O, paint with your restaurant creons. But the way you've described that, like it's sort of sometimes it's a flow or something like that, Like, I'm not planning ahead of time what my creation is even going to be. I have the constraints, but it's just almost in the moment, you're flowing along.

29:33 And we say you might not always even like what you play, but you're it doesn't matter. You kind of let go of your judgment while you're in that creating zone and you don't worry about mistakes. You're just having fun and seeing, Yeah, what what picture am I creating. We do a lot of recording too, and we encourage our students to record these creating activities, and we have a special locker for every student where they can store those, and a lot of times we say go back later, you know, give it, give it a break, and then go back and listen, and you probably you might like what you did better than you thought in the moment. And you'll also we encourage students to use those for their ear training, because if you were playing with four notes and you kind of know what those sound like, so you can go back and oh, I went from the one, three, four or five, or you know, you can you can do that with your own playing sometimes because it's simple and it's using a set of constraints that you're familiar with.

30:23 Okay, so I have a creative Well, I don't know, I have a question, okay. And so for my listeners out there who are piano players or keyboard players, whether you're just learning or your advance, I think this covers across the board. So let's say, for the example of like the campfire right now, what we didn't mention was and you'll have to check it out. You'll have to go to Popmatics and find out. So find some of the videos and you'll understand better. You use the black notes right for the campfire, so g you with Okay, so there's octaves, right, there's octaves on the keyboard, no matter how small the keyboard is, or I mean, there's seven octaves on the regular piano. So if you're doing campfire, do you mention octaves? Do you talk about distinguishing where the octaves are or do you just kind of like just flow with it?

31:24 That is that? Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. So we start with very specific like we start looking at the pattern of black notes and get people to kind of see how they're grouped in twos and threes. Yes, and then camp fire your your home for those with some music theory background is G flat, So we use those five black notes and then we weave in two white notes eventually, but you're getting the concept of octaves by like when I mentioned dropping logs in the fire, Well, I'm playing a low G flat. I'm not going to use that name right away, but later we'll explain to people that was you know, that was a G flat, that's the key here in that was your one. And so through the experiences they will start to see which notes sound the same these concepts of octaves, they will all be learned through experience, and then later we'll take that same experience and do it in other keys. So that's just we find that Tony kind of discovered and I agree with him. The key of G flat is wonderful for creating it. The layout of the black notes and where those two white notes are there, the black notes are the pentatonic.

32:26 And then you've got the the other two notes. But eventually we do a key a month in our program, so you'll make it through each key. And I think Tony just messaged me he might be backstage trying to join us, which is awes. Are you with us? Have you stepped in? I think he's backstage, so maybe we need to let him in. There we go there is Yeah, thank you, Sorry, I'm late. That's okay, that's all right. You're teaching so good. Excuse yes, So before we even start, you're a liberal like I am. Is today your birthday? No? Mine's the September twenty sixth? Is today your birth I missed it?

33:07 Okay? Happy? Well, maybe I saw it on Facebook. Happy birthday. Thank you today your birthday? No yesterday, it was my yesterday. Happy birthday. Thank you, thank you so. Well. Welcomes. Angela and I have been chatting the whole time, and. I heard love. I heard a little bit there at the end there I was backstage for a little bit. Yeah, okay, I absolutely love Popmattics. I love how you and Angela present present the classes. And I told Angela, I said, I will be signing up this year. I promise. But before we go into pop maatux Tony, give our listeners a little history of like where you began, how you started with music, and how you came about creating pop maddox.

33:52 I'll try to give you a quick summary. So I've been interested in music my whole life. I started with band programs. I started playing little guitar in high school. I grew up in a family with six sisters and two brothers. They're all older than me, and they all played an instrument, so we had a lot of instruments around the house by the time I came around, and so I experimented with a lot of different things. But it wasn't really until I went to college that I started learning how to play the piano, and I had studied several other instruments up until that point. I knew earlier than that that I wanted to be a music teacher. I just didn't know that I was going to be a piano instructor. I thought I was going to be maybe a high school band director or something like that. Those were the instruments that I was into. So then it kind of gave me this opportunity when I fell in love with the piano right away. But the problem was is everyone else in college had been playing since they were sick, so I had to desperately try to catch up. And I was very fortunate to meet a lot of musicians who were a lot of self taught musicians that were in bands, and so I had a lot of experience early on just getting to play with other students. And at first I didn't tell anybody this, but I really only knew how to play in a couple keys, and I use that transpose feature just to get by, and that's how I got started. But now through your question was like how we kind of got to popmatics, which potmatics really kind of developed organically. I didn't start off saying I'm going to build this curriculum.

35:18 It started off where I had a student that was a very accomplished musician and a professional musician, but he didn't have a lot of experience with reading music, and so I started creating materials that would help him a little bit more. He had a degree in music and everything past all the exams, and had the theory and all this stuff, but every time I would put sheet music in front of him, it was like you were creating a separation between him and his instrument. And this paper thin separation is enough to just lose that connection, and so I wanted to get rid of that. So I started creating these visual charts and using I was actually making him in spreadsheets, and I was using black cells and white cells to represent the black and white keys so he could get a picture of the patterns and the shapes. And all of a sudden, things started to make sense because he could make these connections and we could go at the speed of his understanding. And so we focused a lot on creativity, and over the years, Angela and I have really been students in our own program.

36:21 This was not something that we knew exactly what it was going to look like right away. Sooner or later we had the Key of the Month, and Angela and I kind of put ourselves to the same put ourselves to the same challenges that we put our students to, which is we call it the campfire challenge. It's five minutes every day. Don't miss it day. If you do, don't let it turn into two in a row. So you know, we give you know, it's like you can take a couple days off if that happens, but really you make it part of the rhythm of your life and daily creation. There's nothing like it. And I know that you know this, Lisa. I watch your your live stream and you're creating and and you're you're bringing in many elements together and you got the chimes and just a lot that you can bring into the music, and it's all kind of what's inside and it comes pouring out.

37:13 And so that's that's really what we do through the creating. So that's not five minutes of practicing your scales or perfecting your songs. It's really generative making new music from the inside out. And now that we have that key of the month, well now we've kind of developed a whole theme. So every month has a theme. So not only is there a key of the month, but there's a theme and that really allows us to shine the spotlight on certain areas of our program throughout the year. So that's kind of that's that's that's where, that's where we are now. It's kind of like adventure Land. I love it. I love it, and there's so many questions I have and and Angela has been wonderful and I'm so glad that both of you are on here. And I love your approach.

37:54 And I had told Angela, I don't know if you mentioned to Angela, like I have theatrical and film back and I. Still have my foot in the door. So your approach to like the campfire and other just just your ideas and your perceptions and your perspectives and like I'm like this little kid. That is just I have so much fun with the classes that I have taken. And again I'm like I said, I will be signing up for more. But your your way of teaching is not like Okay, we're gonna. Learn the theory, We're gonna learn like okay. Your time values, we're gonna learn your dynamics, we're gonna learn the sheet music and your regions on the piano. You just like just listen. And I love that because it takes away that for me personally, I.

38:40 Can read music, but I can't do I can't play by year right, But I'm not great at I don't think I'm great at reading sheet music either either. But you take the intimidation out completely. You just make it across the board fun and so I thank you for that. So for my listeners out there, pop Maatics is easy to find on the web, and I know Angela you said there are some free classes that they can sign up for and then get into the mailing list for the classes coming up. Yeah, Tony, what do you do you have? I know the key of the month is something new that you're working on on, But do you have a specific not genre, but just a specific topic that you absolutely love teaching out of, like across the board? Like what do you absolutely love being able to share that's become maybe an AHA for you that you just like you you just got to get this.

39:34 Well, that's that's a great question, one of I have to say. I it's hard. It's hard for me to pick. I'm almost as enthusiastic about talking about the early concepts as I am the later ones because it's such a a breakthrough. Am I allowed to Can I can I play? Can I demonstrate something? Absolutely? Absolutely? Well? Jumpen. So this this camp fire, my camera might be mirror image. I can't. I can't tell you we can see we can't. So you know, one of the things, I'm just going to give you something really practical for the people watching, because when you look at the when you look at the piano, I mean, it's the first thing most people notice is you got black keys and white keys. And I think it's important for everyone to know that, even if you never hear another thing about how to play the piano other than what I'm about to tell you right now, it's that you can play all the black keys and they sound amazing together. Because really, we have these collections of two and three black keys, and these are tune believe it or not. These are tuned to the same pitches that you'd find in wind chimes, which I know you use. And wind chimes, as we all know, are kind of meant to be played in a random order as the wind blows. And so you can kind of just have this imagination I can play all these black keys. And what Campfire does is it starts to organize that a little bit and say, okay, but these two notes here, these are this is our home, this is our camp, and this is our fire. So even though we can be playing, I can just take a walk like it's a path. At some point I

41:07 want to come back home in that home it's campfire. And so that's again how we kind of teach through story, and then from there we kind of build it out because the five black keys, as amazing as that sounds, we start to include the other two notes from the scale, and as Angel is mentioning we're in a key, we're in a key. I'm just not really calling it. Giving you a story with camp and fire. And so once you learn how to use those two white keys and even bringing them together, there's a lot of freedom. And I don't think any key other than the KYG five that would be my favorite thing. Honestly, I think Campfire is my favorite thing because you can't you can't beat it all the black keys and two white keys, and it's exactly where these two white keys are. They want to come in, they want to come home. And if you stage that out step by step, one thing at a time, it makes it really accessible. And the piano can be very intimidating, but just telling someone to play the black keys, that's not hard, right, play three at a time. Yeah, it takes a little while to learn those white keys, but we do it all in that in that ten day camp Fire series. So all right, I'm going to stop or I won't. So what do you Yeah, that's great.

42:24 Because I think you just demonstrated what we were discussing right before you came in, and it's it's great to have a visual and yeah, hear yes, it's just. We were live so like people, our listeners could be watching us on television or they could be listening and using their imagination. But I love how you've presented this because for our visual listeners and watchers, yes watchers even a word, I don't know, but they can they can see exactly what what you do and what what campfire is. That makes it easy to understand. Yeah, well that's it. At the end of the day. It's we can all talk about what we're doing and that you know, it's like all these different things that we understand, but it comes down to playing and that's a big that's what's so important to us. And it's not even about like the when we give these types of constraints and things to work with. It's not about playing anything perfectly. We're we're we're creating in a world where mistakes haven't even been invented yet. We're just playing and listening and learning is really what it is. They constraints.

43:24 It's so fun to do classes like this and our students come together and I give an instruction, and then we all go and create for a little bit, and then we come back and then we have conversation. Do you have any questions? What did you notice? What sounds? It's it's such a it's it's just such a magical experience to have class discussions like that, because that's really what learning music is all about. It's not just about the theory. It's it's really more about developing your understanding of sound. You don't need all the standard terminology, although we do connect that in the beginning some of that stuff. In the same way sheet music can create that interference, Like Okay, we're going to play a sea made record. People start getting ideas in their head that that means a certain thing and you can only play it one way, and there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. So that's what campfire just takes all that out and just love it could be.

44:13 So I'm watching the time. We have a couple of minutes left. Could we spend maybe like two minutes on Angela and I talked about ear training, like I mentioned intervals, but I know, as Angela said, you don't really talk about intervals per se. You talk about like numbers and the distance between the notes that way. So could you give us a quick example of what, like an easy song, like how would you listen to it and play it out? Like would you? Does that make sense? I mean a little bit? So let me let me give you a great example. So one of the first activities that we do is something that we call listening for home. So that's really listening for the sound of campfire where things feel settled. So when you're first listening to a song, I'll play one. Maybe people probably know you've heard blackbird Fly. That's home. That's the feeling of home right there, that's where camp fire. I'm in the key, you see what I mean. I'm listening and I hear I hear all that one the birds on the flight not home yet you can kind of just feel this

45:52 feeling of home. So that's one of the first activities. And what's beautiful about that is you can get used to that. You don't even have to touch your piano. You can just be listening to the music and listen for where the song feels like, resolves, where it belongs. You can say. You won't not know what key it's in if you don't have a perfect pitch, but you can say, whatever that is, that's home, that's home. I love it. Well, well, I was you? Is that is that too much? Go ahead? No? No, I could. We could talk probably for easily another hour, but we have just a couple of minutes left. So how do our listeners find you? Guys? Again, the easiest, quickest. Way just type in Popmatics. We were totally original that that name is going to give you everything. Yeah, popmatics dot com is where you can find our own website.

46:33 But if you just type in Popmatics anywhere TikTok YouTube, we're the only thing that comes up. Awesome, awesome, and and you have new programs starting soon or you just just sign up and you'll see what's available now. Oh that's the beautiful thing is Yeah, you can start any time. I heard you mentioned that before, So the theme of the month is actually not that new. We're just that's something we've been doing. We've almost done a complete year on it, so it's a fully it's a very immersive one year trip because we take you through the Circle of fifths, twelve keys twelve months, so you can actually start at any time, and we have a welcome course so that there's a nice little on REMP because if you just come right to classes, it's going to feel a little bit like drinking from a fire hose because we have a lot of terminology, so we have a welcome course that gets you familiar with our terminology and our practice routines, and then then you can hop on the live circuit and wherever you start, you're going to get through all twelve keys in twelve months.

47:31 Love it, so you can start at any time. Awesome, Well, thank you so much, Tony, Thank you so much, Angela. You will be hearing from me. I'm so glad that we got had this opportunity and our listeners out there, Popmatics, if you're looking to learn and go about it in a fun, easy way, Pop Maddix, Like you said, it's not hard to find it's. Not hard to find. Thanks for having us. Yes, we'll talk, Yes, you too, right, so much for all that you do. Oh, thank you for you too. Thank you appreciate this. All right, we'll talk soon. Thank you so much for tuning into the sound of Gold and say tuned. Let's keep music alive and you'll find out next week, same time, four o'clock on Monday.

48:18 Next week you will find out who our guests are. And I'm so excited. I can't wait. So thank you for tuning in. And with that being said, I'll just play us. Listen you well,