The Sound of Gold with guest Ashlee Young Piano Studio

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1:01 HI are welcome. Welcome to the Sound of Gold. I'm so glad that you're here, and if you are just tuning in for the first time. The Sound of Golds is based on music, musicians, music teachers, music venues, and music schools. I am a music teacher as well as a radio show host, and I love playing piano, and I also I'm also a student, even though I'm a teacher. And there's so much to share with you today, and I'm so excited because I'm just going to kind of ramble on a little bit. And if you've been with me before, you know I kind of zigzag, and if you're new to the show, you'll follow along because it's always fun. If you play an instrument, if you're thinking about playing an instrument. I'm a little bit partial I've been playing the piano since I was five, and I didn't always love playing piano. I didn't always love to lessons, but it became my lifestyle and it's become it's been my career for over twenty years, and teaching, playing, composing and reading music. It's not something that I've just come to be overnight, right. It takes time, it takes practice, and if you're thinking about getting out there and learning an instrument, I think the piano is the easiest instrument to learn on because you're kind of looking at black and white and the patterns and then reading new music and understanding the language of music. With that being said,

2:36 whether you're watching this live or whether you're listening, I am so excited, like on top of the moon, to introduce my guests this week. My guest is Ashley Young, and she is an online music piano teacher, and she has so many different courses available and she gives so much of her free time. I mean, you could just type in her name and there's hundreds of YouTube videos about different topics, different focuses, and let me introduce her to you. Ashley, are you backstage? Are you with us today? I am hello, Hello, I'm so excited to be here. Bye. Yes, so glad to have you here. And we were talking briefly before. So I'm here in Florida. You are?

3:24 Are you in Colorado? Are you? I'm in the Pacific Northwest on the west coast. Okay, Okay? And is it very cold there? It's it's pretty chilly, yeah, chilly and rainy. So here in Florida we have like one of the coldest cold spells going on. It's been I think it's in the forties or fifties right now, but yesterday it was in I think the low thirties. I mean, it's We've had frost on our car this morning and we're not used to that. So but but besides that, I am like one of your hugest fans, like behind the scenes, I'm constantly following your videos and I'm like, all right, what does she have like on special this week? I'm like, all right, I want to sign up for that class.

4:08 And even though I've been teaching for over twenty years and I've been playing for over forty five, not to give my age away, but I'm still a student. I'm still always wanting to like better myself. I'm still wanting to like understand more because there's no end. I think even like when I reach ninety or one hundred years old, God, you know, God blesses me that long, I think I'll still be like learning something different or a different approach, or or just something something new. There's so much that you provide online. There's so much that you offer. But even before that, and my cat is joining us, even before we get into that, I would love to hear a little bit about your journey, like what's brought you to where you are today? Because we didn't wake up and just like okay, we're teaching. It took her how to work to get here.

4:59 Absolutely, I love what you said about being a lifelong student because I think that's the mark of a really incredible teacher, is someone who is willing to admit that they don't know everything and that they're always learning. And you know, we as teachers have to practice what we preach and learn and watch videos and constantly be rethinking what we're doing and open to doing something new. And I always tell my students and the people that you know are in my community, that is an inspiration when I see them willing to change their way of thinking and try something new. It inspires me to do the same. So how did I end up where I am? It's you know, I'll give you the short version of the long story. I started playing, you know, as a young child when I was four, played for my whole life, not always at my own drive. You know. I had a lot of incurrent from my parents who said, why don't you just stick at it a little longer at the points when I wanted to quit, And then I pursued an undergrad and a master's degree in classical piano performance.

5:54 And when I started my undergrad degree, I had this incredible teacher as my you know, my channel lesson teacher during my degree, and she was like, you're you're waitressing at a restaurant and you're going to teach. You're going to teach. I'll teach you how to teach, and so she kind of mentored me in starting my own studio. And I started teaching when I was a freshman in college, and it allowed me to pay for my undergraduate degree while I was going to school. I got myself through grad school with that degree and then I have never really stopped. It has allowed me to put into practice everything I've learned, and there's been different seasons of life where performing was in the spotlight and teaching was in the background, or vice versa, where teaching was in the spotlight and performing was in the background. But I have never stopped teaching, and I've always loved it because I really enjoy figuring out how to explain things as simply as possible, or in the clearest way possible, so that hopefully as many people can understand well.

6:50 And there's thank you, thank you for sharing that. And I'm partial to the piano, perhaps you are too, but it's the easy is instrument to learn on. I mean, it's just black and white and it's patterns, and it's like, yeah, I mean if you take it apart, like a puzzle piece and you just focus on one pattern, you can kind of just learn I mean begin to learn there. But I love this the many courses that you offer online and for our listeners out there that want to learn more about what you offer, where would be a good place for them to start? I mean YouTube or.

7:31 Yeah, I mean, as you said, I have so many free resources, which I think is such a wonderful place to start because I truly believe that in this day and age, the best thing about the online world is that you get to choose who you learn from, right, And so a YouTube channel or YouTube videos are a great way, in a very low risk way to see if you really vibe with someone's teaching style. And so I have a lot of YouTube videos, and then I also have you know, my course that is the most popular currently, which is called Read Music ten Times Faster. And it's all based in exactly what you're saying, which is breaking down like what I consider to be the five most common of the musical patterns and the ones that you really need to be able to do, like recognize quickly in order to actually get you to your goal, which with most of the people that I work with, their goal is to play the piano beautifully, right, And so what are the patterns you need to know in order to actually fast track that?

8:21 And one of the I don't know if you tuned in to my last week's show, I had Aaron on here from Piano Marvel and we got to talk about forgive me, I'm not good at remembering this kind of stuff, the sas or something about your score for reading music. Oh okay, I know, I'm so so anyway, in the back of my mind, and I recently saw a promotion that you're doing for like reading music faster. I'm like, oh, I've been waiting for this. I'm like, I have to sign up, which I will because even playing this many you know, so many years, and I read music and I play music. I still I'll repeat what I said to Aaron last week, and that is for me as a teacher also student, but for me when I'm teaching, I specifically focused on the student that I had last week.

9:15 And I say this to several of my students, and this student as an adult, and I said, I mean, I respect, disrespect to anybody out there, or me or anybody. I said, but when we're playing the piano, you know you have your travel cluff, your bass cleft, your right hand, your left hand. The left hand is the slower child, and so we need to give that child a little bit extra love and attention. So my thing with teaching is let's focus on the left hand first, because the right hand's got it going. And so so your course for teaching, you not only teach like how to read music, you teach like confidence, You teach like specifically there's so many breakdowns of your different focus on the piano. There's it's like a buff if you don't mind me saying your program is like a buffet, Like if you go to like I don't know, we go to like an Asian buffet here and there's like fifty different dishes, Like you have all of the dishes going on, and it's like you can pick whatever you want and if you're not sure, you get to try them out. It's just such a beautiful gift you give the community and the world because this is worldwide.

10:31 Thank you, Thank you. I do try. I mean the buffet idea. I love that. I've never heard that analogy, but it's true. You know, when I was teaching private lessons, and I'm sure you can understand. You will resonate this with this as well. When you're teaching private lessons, someone will sign on for lessons, and usually it's kind of like indefinitely, right, Like you'll sign on usually under the assumption that they're just going to continue going until they've learned as much as they want to know. And so when I first started creating online courses, I was creating courses that were really big, that really broad topics that, and it just was too much. I was finding that I was overwhelming the students a little bit and they were getting great results, but they were also like, wow, I could spend like two years on this one course.

11:12 And so I started narrowing down a little bit and focusing on many more courses, but like they all focus on one specific thing. And when I started doing that, the feedback that I got was just wild. People loved it because it does like you said, it allows them to go to the buffet and pick exactly what they want and then they can always come back for more if they want to or not. But they get that they get their actual problem solved versus me trying to solve all the problems in one course. And what you just said, I love that and I've used it in my teaching as well, problem solving instead of going to the frustration phase of it or the frustration feeling of learning it, like Okay, let's break it down, let's problem solve it. And you offer that breakdown. You offer like okay, like this is me talking, you know, let's take this puzzle apart. Let's just look at it piece by piece before we put it together. And I'm not speaking for you speaking for myself, and maybe I would think you may agree. You know, when you when we teach a student, there's like you really can't say, Okay, you're gonna know this song by this date, right, And that's the frustration because we live in this microwave Amazon order it like overnight world, and if I can't have it, then well then it's just not gonna work for me.

12:30 But when we look at it like problem solving, and again this is just me talking problem solving, it is like you're thinking. You're not like wondering when the delivery is gonna come, or you're looking at it like, Okay, I got it. I can figure this out. And it's almost like you're a reward to yourself as a student, Like you're rewarding yourself by saying I can figure this out, and I don't need a time limit because then I limit myself. For learning absolutely. So if someone is new to this and wants to get started with piano, let's say has a busy schedule, can't necessarily get one on one teachers Live, which is the best. Second best in my world is online because I do take classes online as well. What course would you recommend a beginner to start off with in your program.

13:23 Yeah, I would recommend the read music ten times faster one. So, and I preface that by saying, there is I have a free YouTube video where I show you exactly how to read notes on the grand Staff. And you do need to know how to read notes on the grand staff in order to do that course. But with that free video and the course, you'll be able to do it. And that's the one where you really go through and I show you how to like I not only show you how to read notes and intervals and major and minor chords and key signatures and rhythm patterns, but where I drill them with you. And I created that course, you know, with the idea of like, how could I really translate a one on one lesson to a course format? And so I literally sit there. There's I mean hours of videos of me going through with these slash cards with you, and I drill you on all of this information, and I do it slowly and then I take you through lightning rounds so it's faster, you know. And so it's I basically did exactly what I do with my what I used to do with my one on one students, in a video format to try to get people that same exact result even though it's an online course versus a one on one lesson.

14:21 And then again for our listeners out there, your direct website, what is it? So it's actually Jyong dot com? So actually is a sahl ee the letter J and then young dot com and there I have a store page and you'll be able to see all of my courses. But the Read Music ten times Faster courses on. There, okay, so pretty much that would be Read Music ten times Faster would be the first course to start with. Yeah, And from what I understand, you want students to have an idea of music notes first. Yeah, that's generally the way I teach. You know, I have taught students before the past who want to learn by ear and such. But I just think the more holistic we can be, the more well rounded we can be as musicians, the easier it is to speak the language fluently, right, And I think that's true with a lot of languages, Like you can learn for sure by just listening and repeating what you hear, but I think it gets you so far, and I just like to approach it from a more holistic standpoint, Now, do you.

15:18 Do you also privately teach in your area or you just are you just focus on what you do so much. I mean, I see you on Instagram, I see you on Facebook, I see you on YouTube. It sounds like I'm always online and I'm really not. But any I'm always learning, I'm always feeding my mind. So you're you know, I'm piano. You're there, you know. So yeah, do you do you teach privately still or no? I don't currently. I think, you know, maybe eventually I'll started back up again. But I've been all online since twenty twenty three and definitely twenty three. Yeah awesome. Yeah do you have I mean, I'll probably ask this again. Do you have any specific I'm not gonna say aha, but any specific messages you'd want to share with our listeners who are wanting to get involved in piano and why piano would be the instrument to start with other than my two cents.

16:17 Sure, well, I do like and appreciate what you said, which is that you know, the piano is one of the easiest instruments to visualize all music theory concepts on because we can see it and it's like, you know, it's far enough away from us that we can see the whole entire piano, and that really does make a difference, especially when you're learning about things like chords or harmony, and so in that way, I think it can be really helpful. But the other thing is I think that you know, because when you're playing the piano, well, I guess I'll back up. When you're playing any instrument, there's always the physical component, right of like how you actually have to physically move your body in order to play the instrument. And I think because it's different than a would win instrument, right like we don't have to like take a deep breath and learn how to breathe properly and all of that, I think it can be one of the quickest instruments to get a result on. Not like you, not in the way where I can promise that you'll be able to do anything in a certain number of days, but when you know you can pick up a piece of music and you can kind of get it to sound at least somewhat like that piece of music sooner I think than a lot of other instruments.

17:21 You know, if you're playing the violin, it's like it takes a really long time to just figure out how to make the violin sound like a violin and not like a screepteet cat. And so the piano has like less of a barrier to entry than a lot of other instruments. And I think for adult beginners, the thing that I always like to remind people of is it touches on a little bit of what you said, but is it like to just be patient with yourselves. I'd love to give this little exercise, and I do it in a couple of my courses where I have people kind of like reminisce or think back to their favorite teacher. And it doesn't have to be a music teacher. It could be a teacher from elementary school, or maybe a coach or someone from church, Like just any adult who when you were a kid, like they made a difference in your life. And when we bring those people to the forefront of our memory, chances are that those people were kind and encouraging and they helped you to believe that you could do something even if you lacked that belief in yourself. And I think when we set out to learn an instrument, it's so important as an adult to like show up for ourselves in that way, and to speak kindly to ourselves and to say like, I can do this, I can figure this out. You know.

18:28 If something's going wrong, it's not because there's something inherently wrong with me. It's because I probably need some more answers, you know, or I need to take a deep breath, or I need to take a break. So just kind of showing up for yourself in that way, I think could be really powerful and can be the difference between success that comes from like an enjoyable journey and frustration and maybe a little bit of success that comes from like a pretty not enjoyable journey. Absolutely, absolutely, and I'm sorry, did I cut you off? No, it's funny or relatable. A lot of times I'm working with my students and regardless of what their age is, and especially the older ones, because we like it's so like wrapped up in our like and responsibilities and what we have to do and what we have to take care of, and we're hard on ourselves because we have great expectations. However, whether it be my adult students or my my kids students as I say, child children's students, I always remind them be kind and be patient, with yourself because it's it's you. And then another another thing or words that I found helped with my students is value what you do, like if you're okay, I have cats, So I use this as a as a an example.

19:54 If I have to take out the cat litter, you know it's got to be done. It's a chore, right. But if you're investing your time, and my mom always taught me, time is money. If you're investing your time in learning an instrument, no matter what your age is, you've made the commitment, show up and value what you're doing, like take into account like your presence, like what are you doing? Why are you doing it? And going back to yes, be patient and be kind with yourself because you want to learn it. Another big thing that well you mentioned, but another big thing I find in life in general is if I don't if I get frustrated at the pianoists because I don't have clarity, I'm not understanding something. So again going back to my students, Yes, you need to be patient to give yourself the understand the time to understand it. And if it's something you don't understand because you haven't learned it yet, so be okay with that, Like, you don't know everything, although we'd like to know everything. For me, when I'm new pieces, I get frustrated. I'm like, okay, this is new. Great.

21:03 I get to learn something new because I have no idea. Yes, and that's the beauty of being a student. And so yeah, I just I love all that you do. I love the different the different classes you give. Please share, I know, but please share with our listeners the different focus classes that you provide. Sure. Yeah, so I have I have the Read Music ten Times dash of course, which we were talking about, and that one is focused on how to read faster. I have a couple of things that go along with that that are different resources, like a pattern decoder that's a PDF that kind of shows you, like how to recognize the patterns in real music. And then I also have something called the site reading cheat Code, which is another it's like a PDF and some videos and that goes through the steps that you take every single time you sit down to site read a piece of music.

21:55 And I always like to clarify that site reading is really playing something really well on the very first track is true sight reading. And then I also have, you know, I have some courses that are very specific. So, for example, I have a pedal course that shows you what all the pedals are, how to use them, how to get your foot to coordinate with your hands, and how to also decide on pedaling in a more advanced level if that's something that you are doing. I have a rhythm course. That one's really important, and I get a lot of really good feedback about that course because a lot of people don't realize that rhythm is interconnected to everything else that we do at the piano. You know, people will often say like, oh, I'm struggling with hand coordination issues. Can you suggest some hand coordination exercises? And I always say, well, hand coordination is very rarely about the hands and the fingers, and it's most often about a lack of clarity of your brain not being able to build really clear directions to your hands about where they need to be on the piano and when they need to be there. And when you start to really look at the rhythm and figure out how to count things out loud, you attain that high level of clarity. And so something that seemed really complicated and impossible all of a sudden starts to feel much more simple, and the hands coordinate together because they have that common thread that's tying them together, which is like the rhythm aka the counting right right. So I have that rhythm course, and then I also have actually tomorrow, I have a brand new course coming out.

23:18 It's called Learn Any Piece in Half the Time, and that course really focuses on the steps that you can take every single time you're learning a piece of music in order to achieve success, right, because a lot of people think like they have to reinvent the wheel every time they learn a new piece, but it's really it's the things you want to do in the same order. You know, you listen to the piece, you figure out the fingering, you want to look at the rhythm, and it's kind of those same things plus a few more that you go through every single time. And when you do that, you build this really solid foundation not only for the piece that you're trying to learn, but also for any piece you ever want to learn. And so that that course is going to be basically like the read music ten times faster course, but for actually learning Peace said the music. And so I'm really excited about that one as well. And there's more, but I'll stop there.

24:04 I'm gonna have to check that out. Yeah, yeah, you know this conversation. A similar conversation came up last week and I mentioned it to Aaron. And I'll reflect on a couple of my students. I have one student, adult student I've been working with for a few years, and then I have this new student and she is she's like level five, let's say. And my adult student plays like easy easy music, easy pop, not not by letter, but like not advanced but not beginner type of music. However, my the difference is it's almost as if, like my younger student, she impresses me and inspires me so much.

24:52 She says to play like she'll play canon and D like it's so easy, and it does and take her two seconds, but to play both hands where my other student, I forgot the name of the song that we're well, I'm not going to say the name right but we're in this place or something that's a similar name of the song. He's working on it right hand, left hand. But the left hand it's almost like it's not following along. Let me say properly, but it's just not it's not moving along as well as the right hand is, and which I mentioned earlier, left hands a little bit needs a little bit more attention. But I'm wondering if there's like the studies on the brain with eye hand coordination, because I have more students like my adult student than I do my younger student who just jumps in and she can just play like it's no challenge in your years of experience, and you as a piano player as well.

25:52 But tips, and I know I'm not the only one out there, what tips would you share with not only me, but with our lists for how to smooth out like both hands so that you're not stopping or constantly stopping to to get get one better than the other, or get working together. Definitely to be and to be friends. I like that this is I mean, this is a tricky one and I always, I always have to laugh a little bit when I'm about to give this answer because people don't like the answer, so I'm always a little bit hesitant to give it. But in all of my experience, honestly that it usually does come back to specifically counting out loud.

26:37 And the reason is because, I mean, we have these two separate hands, each with five fingers, so totally there's ten. It's a lot of different things that are happening or could be happening at the same time. And because of that, there's also a large margin of error of any number of things could go wrong at any given time. And when we have one hand that is dominant, so if you're right handed, perhaps it's your right hand, and with music, oftentimes it's the right hand because for some reason, like we all, the trouble clutch seems to click for most people more than the base cleft. There's you know, that idea that like the right hand's just a little bit easier, or we hear the melody and so it's easier to mimic the sound of the right hand. And when it comes to getting the left hand on the right hand to work together, we're essentially asking different parts of our brain to control different parts of our body and make them work in a very specific way. And so the analogy that I like to give is the counting out loud.

27:32 It provides the skeleton, it provides the structure. And what's really cool is that if you count out loud, you can do it slow, you can do it fast, you can do it upside down backwards, eyes closed, because you really have that like solid skeleton. And I want you to kind of imagine like if you were to take like a a skeleton and take the structure out of it, or like you just like a bag of bones on the floor, right, and nothing really makes sense but that structure. And the reason that we recognize the picture of a skeleton is because the structure that holds it there. And so the same is true with music when it comes to the right hand and the left hand. Any issue between the right hand and the left hand is usually because there's like a little bit of confusion or lack of organization or just lack of clarity on exactly when everything fits together. But once students know, like well, I know the left hand is supposed to play on B one and B two and B three, the counting out loud is literally turning you into the conductor. It's like you're giving those verbal directions constantly to your hands, and so it doesn't matter if you practice it slowly or quickly.

28:38 You have that like common thread or that that skeleton that's holding it all together. So that's the first thing. And then the second little thing that I think sometimes can be an issue if that is not the issue. So if they're like solidly counting out loud. The other thing I like to look at is technique and just making sure that someone isn't like trying to get each individual finger to be responsible for each individual note, and just making sure like they're loose in their shoulder, they're loose in their wrist, and they're you know, guiding their arm with their elbow as opposed to each individual finger, because sometimes that can also be a little bit of an issue, but usually the biggest issue is the rhythm, the counting. And one of your courses. I know you've I've seen videos where you've said, if you're you know, playing note by a note, it's like reading a word letter by letter, and then.

29:28 Like you're never going to read Shakespeare that way. Yes, yes, I heard you say that, and it's so true, and I know so many times. For this one particular student, I'm going, all right, let's focus on the shape. But let's remember the shape of your hand to know like what you're playing now, you mentioned counting. Are you talking about time values or counting like what finger you're playing? So in this specific instance, IM kind of about the time values. Yeah, So like if it's four four time you're counting one and two and three and four hand I do say counting, you know, saying your fe what numbers that a lot can be very helpful when you're learning your finger numbers. But yeah, with the coordination issues, it's more rhythm based. Very interesting. Yeah, I would love to. I don't know if I have the know how or even the time to do more investigation on how the brain learns right hemisphere life left hemisphere, and how to marry the hands together to be friends so they play nicely together. Yes, because it does take extra practice now from some of what I heard, and please correct me if I'm not right.

30:39 But you are classically trained, is that correct? Yes? And so when you approach teaching, do you have a genre that you focus on when you practice yourself or when you teach. Yeah, I mean I love classical because it's what my background is, and so I do tend to get a lot of people that are interested in classical. But you know, I also get a lot of people that are interested in playing like their favorite musical theater pieces or pop pieces, and I am comfortable to teach all of those. And I would say my methods work for most piano players, with the exception of and I'm very willing to admit I am by no means an expert when it comes to like advanced jazz or advanced improvisation. I could teach you the basics there, but beyond that, I don't have experience with that. And so when people will comment like, you know, will this work for me my goal is to improvise in a jazz combo, I'm usually like no, no, no, no, I don't. I'll have to recommend some other teachers. But otherwise, you know, if you want to play any music from sheet music and you're not looking to improvise in an advanced way, than all of the courses will work.

31:49 Okay, So thank you. Going back to your courses again. For friends of ours that are just tuning in listeners that are just tuning in Ashleyjyong dot com. Yeah, and it's actually with to ease a shl ee j. Young and plus you can find you anywhere just type in piano and Ashley, and I love that you are. I mean, you have such a knack for this and I personally thank you for all the information that you share because it's so much information. It's not to take away from taking a course like I've learned personally, like I've fished that I'm like, oh, I have a question.

32:33 I wonder like what what this means or how this would be different or I want to learn this, and I can find that different places on YouTube. But to take a course, like you really get committed and whether it hurts your brain or not to go through it, because I know I took a course and I'm like, my brain is like so over like powered. I've like, I don't know what I'm going to like gain from all this because I can't see the forest through the tree kind of thing. Because it's the way I guess, the way our brain learns. But there is this part in life where it just clicks, just like playing a song, like how long is it gonna take? Well, I don't know.

33:15 But if you just practice these little measures in chunks of this is my teaching. You know, we practice it in chunks, so we break it up. You don't need to practice it in order because if you keep starting at the beginning, you're gonna know the beginning so well that you're not even gonna want to finish it. So so anyway, what I'm getting to is thank you again for all that you provide online, for answering questions, and for being so detailed in your in your approach to teaching and more so, you know, like let's say teaching piano, Like you have one one thing I've seen actually several times about how to read music faster, and you have this clip. Whether it's fifteen twenty minutes long, I don't remember, but that's not enough. And I'm not saying that as a teacher, and I'm saying that as a student. Like, once you get involved in taking the course, whether it's three weeks, six weeks or if you're online, you work all the time. You've got to do it when you can.

34:17 You know, you make the commitment and it's a discipline. Yeah, and you learn, and because a lot of it's new, you can't put a cap on how long it's going to take. Yeah, and it I think the thing about courses that's nice is there's not holes that you have to go back and fill later. You know. I always tell people like you can anything that's in my courses is actually online for free, just in a slightly different format, just because of the nature of like you said, you know, a twenty minute video is not the same as a course that lasts several hours. But the thing that's nice about a course or about having a private teacher is you're not going to have those holes because everything is covered. And because I've been doing this for so long, I now know like the mistakes people make, and so I cover the mistakes in the courses preemptive right, And so they're set up in a way to really help people get the most amount of success as possible with the least amount of time and effort, because, like to your point, it's going to take a little time and it takes commitment, but if you have the right information in the right order, it's usually a lot straight or path than if you're trying to go around and search for all of the information and you're wandering and getting distracted.

35:21 Now with your courses online, are they for all ages? Are they for young children? All the way? Child? Like one hundred or one hundred and twenty people are living told today as I heard earlier today, But do you is it for all ages or do you specifically have an age group you'd like to focus on. I focus on adults, and a lot of what I teach so I actually get a lot of teachers that buy my courses because a lot of what I teach. If you are a teacher or if you're a parent that's very involved, you can turn around and then use that method to teach your students. But I wouldn't necessarily recommend, like giving one of my courses to a ten year old, because I don't. I don't talk to I would. I would.

36:02 I would do it a lot differently if I were recording the course for the child after having taught kids all my life. So yeah, they're not recorded with kids in mind, but the methods would work if an adult wanted to watch and pass. Those methods belong. Right, Okay, and then I know what the answer is and I know what I would say. Awesome. Do you students necessarily have to have a piano? Can they? Can they have a keyboard? And are you when you give lessons? Does it matter whether it's a forty four key or an ad key? Oh man, this is another tough one. So I would say, this is what I always used to say when I was teaching private lessons. If someone really wants to start a kid and they cannot, they cannot make the investment for a piano or a larger keyboard. I would say, you know, for a month or two if you want to test it out and you want to, like, you know, learn how to read music, learn the basics of reading notes, and learn the basics of where the keys are on the piano. You can probably get by with one of those keyboards that's a few octaves or not all eighty eight keys, but anything beyond that, I would highly encourage someone to get a nicer keyboard or, if possible, a piano.

37:11 I mean, in my opinion, like a digital will never they get that's gotten really good, but they still though, I'm never going to exactly replicate the feel and the sound of an acoustic piano because the sound isn't pretty the same way. And so if it's possible, and I know it's not possible for everybody, and that's okay, you can learn on a keyboard, but if it's possible, it would be best to get the nicest instrument or the best acoustics that you can. And I'll give the caveat which is that there are so many organizations that are giving away through pianos because a lot of people don't want to pay to move them or don't have the space for them. And so getting a piano nowadays is actually not what it used to be. It's not you can get them for free off of Facebook, Marketplace, and so just keeping that in mind too. You can get really nice keyboards, really nice pianos for very inexpensive, if not free.

37:56 Yeah, that's true. In fact, I got this orl or through marketplace. Yeah, because I think a family was moving, the kids were grown, they didn't want to move it, and so I just had to pay for it. Well, no, I paid less. I paid I think twelve hundred for it, but it's but I had to pay for it to be moved. However, there are other I've had other experiences where I bought a piano and I well I didn't. It was given donated and I just had to pay for it to be moved. Yeah, and that's that's a whole nother conversation because then you have to try half the piano, and I have another conversation. But I do the same for my young my young students or anyone interested that has not gotten involved with piano yet. I would say too, Yeah, to try it out. Spend less than one hundred bucks on a keyboard. Yeah, see if it fits, see if it sticks, and then make the investment. Yeah, because it's an investment. I said this out at a performance for MT and A. Are you familiar with the MT and A. We had an event, I think the Halloween Musical, and I had said to the parents and the students, I said, you know, when you invest in your kids and your grandkids and learning piano, you're giving them a gift of a lifetime, because as you know, it's and you've had probably you've had different schooling than I've had, and I would believe you would agree with me.

39:24 You learn such a discipline from being the student and even being the teacher, because we learn from each other and we learn from our students. But there's such a discipline to the practice that goes that reigns on all other areas of our lives. Absolutely, it helps support so much more because you know, it's just it's a focus. The discipline is a focus that we just take into different areas. Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah. I love to tell my students, like, you know, there's not an end goal, like you're never going to reach perfection, And I think it's the most beautiful for anything we want to do in life and for life itself, that if we just show up every day with the intention to practice, knowing that perfection is not the goal, but knowing that we can also probably get a little bit better or a little bit of progress each day. That's that's what music is, right, And in that way, I think it takes a lot of the pressure off that we have to accomplish things by a certain timeline or you know, especially if you're an adult, it's not like you're trying to pass a college exam.

40:25 You're doing this for fun likely, and so taking that time pressure off and that immediacy off and just showing up for the practice, you'll learn so many things. And that's the other thing that my students tell me is that, you know, they took a course on rhythm, or they took a course on reading music faster, and they learned other techniques on how to like organize their work life better, or how to show up with their kids in a different way. Because music is so it permeates every part of our life. It's it's a human experience. It's not just about you know how, trying to play one piece as quickly as possible. Right, right, Yeah, and not to get too off the subject and probably meant in this in a few minutes to it for me and don't we don't know each other that well. But for me, I love improvisation and I play with I kind of play by feeling the energy in the room, right, so I channel it in and I play it. And the reason why I'm bringing this up whether I'm playing it that way or I'm reading music playing somebody else's music, I mean, I still encourage my students to improvise, like once you know the rules, you know.

41:28 How to break them kind of thing totally. But the point I'm getting to is that this is this is silly, but I'll use analogy we have there, like are twelve basic notes. There are twelve basic sounds. I mean there's more, we know there's more, but there's there's twelve basic notes. And so to feel and to listen to the difference in the sounds and then to realize that everything around us has a sound and a vibration. And you know, there's so much research on healing and how sound healing raises your vibration and raises your healing levels, whether you're listening or learning or playing, there's such gosh, there's such a magical space and place when you're playing an instrument that you unless you're doing it, it's hard to explain. I mean, it's what I've mentioned a few minutes ago, is it's a gift you give not only yourself, but your kids, whoever you're investing the music in to, or you yourself, like I said, and I mean I could, I could talk music twenty four seven. It's just there's so much magic in it. And you as a performer as well. You know, when you've sat and you played, there's there's I don't want to speak for you, but I would imagine you. You know, once you know your piece, you can just kind of go into that zone and and fly on that. I mean, do you want to fill in the blank yet?

42:58 I mean, that's that's exactly what you said about kind of like channeling the notes through. I kind of imagine that with the feelings too, Like if I'm playing a piece by Beethoven, I'm like trying to capture the emotion and the feeling and the story and the human experience and bring it through in the notes. And so I always imagine like a bubble around me and the piano and whoever's listening, and like, whatever I'm creating kind of exists in that bubble. And I think the beautiful thing about music too is that it's one of a kind. Even if you and I were to both perform the same Beethoven piece on the same piano, one ride after the other, it would be completely unique and completely different. And in that way, I do, I do absolutely stand with you in the fact that it's magical. Yeah, it is magical.

43:40 It is magical, and I love it. And I highly recommend everyone being a student of music and again being partial to the piano. I that who the wants to start with. But you know, if you have other instruments, you know starts somewhere. I just know with the piano, you learn the instrument and you learn how to read music. I've told my students, so you can play every instrument in the world after that, but once you learn the basics, like, this is the place to start. Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, and yeah, So we have a couple of minutes left. Is there any last minute words you want to share with our audience? Actually, let me think for a second. I think yeah, I would love to I would love to share something that I like to remind my students of which is you know, I I come from the school of thought like I enjoy the learning side of the pieces and like the journey and trying to, you know, figure out that journey. I enjoy that just as I enjoy like the magical side, which is what we're talking about of like performing, but I think recognizing that there are there's a time and a place for both, right Like that you're sitting there and you're practicing, there's gonna be a time where it doesn't There's gonna be a lot of times where it doesn't feel magical, where it might be frustrating, and it might be it might feel slower than you want it to, and it might feel like your brain is like literally breaking in half because it's so challenging.

45:03 But in those moments, if you can take take that frustration and just ask yourself that question, like what could I learn? What do I need to learn in order to do this? I think that's such a golden question, and just approaching your practice with that like open playful curiosity of like this is not life or death. You know you can learn it if you have access to the right tools and letting yourself exist in that space of learning and just enjoying that process even when it's frustrating, and then also letting yourself have fun and just make the music. You know, if you're putting in the practice time, and what I tell my students all the time is like, if you're putting in the practice time, especially if you're using that practice time correctly and you're practicing in ways that are effective and efficient, then there also has to be a time where you turn off that part of your brain and you say, Okay, now I'm going to sit there, I'm going to play through this piece for fun and I'm just gonna I'm just gonna feel it, and I'm just going to trust that I did enough practice and that now I really get to like make the music and just go for it and trust yourself, because I think both can be challenging, but I think I do see students really like sticking or sticking in that stage of like learning the pieces or just playing the pieces right, and they're not letting the sells. Kind of go back and forth between those two spaces, but both are equally as important, and especially if your goal is to make music, then schedule time in your practice session or use the last fifteen minutes to just make music and just like have the time of your life.

46:24 Just have fun and bring that energy and I'll feeling to it. I love that well, Ashley. Thank you so much for being a part of our show today. And in closing, please share with us how for our listeners how do we find you online? Sure? Thank you so much for having me. This has been a joy online on YouTube and on Instagram. I'm actually Young Music Studio, and then my website is actually Jayong dot com. Actually you spelled with a shl ee the letter J, and then Young dot com. I'm in all those places. Great, I can talk to you for another hour or two, but yes, thank you so much, Ashley, and we will. We will be in toauch. We will talk soond Thanks for having me absolutely, thank you so much for tuning in today, Ashleyjyong dot com. Check out her website or even just type in her name and you'll get to watch some of her videos. I'm so excited she was on our show today. But that being said, thank you for joining us. I'm so happy that you're here with me today and wishing you well much love and happiness, wherever you are, and for US Florida people here it's cold, so if you're here in Florida, stay warm. And in other states it's cold too, so stay warm and tune in next week