The Sound of Gold with guest Jazz pianist Steve Sanders

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0:51 Hi, welcome to the Sound of Gold. I'm so glad that you're here with us today, and if you are here with us, lived that you are here, and if you are watching this recorded, I'm excited that you are listening. I am here in my home studio with my cat Calli. Here some of you who know of my music and know of my playing. A few years ago I started doing online shows and the title of my show was Lisa Evagold with kat Calli. And so she's here with us again. She's the grandma of my cats, and sometimes she likes to play too. Well. We are in the new year. Happy New Year, everyone, and I'm so happy that I get to do this for you and for me.

1:41 I'm a music teacher, piano teacher in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida as well as a radio show host. And I love to play, I love to teach, I love to host the show, and the real purpose of my hosting the show is to shine light on the talent that is in our communities, not only the talent of our musicians, but the talent of our teachers. And we also want to bring attention to music venues, music schools. And my secret passion to all this, and I guess it's not a secret, is that I just want to keep music alive. We as musicians, we play from our heart, We play from the zone. We play because it's a passion we love to share, and you know, it's reciprocal because our audiences love to listen to music. We as musicians love to listen to music, and those of us that play.

2:37 I'll speak for myself. I feel like I'm giving back to the to the world when I share my music, and I think all musicians could agree with that, but I can only speak for myself. With that being said, some of actually all of the music I write and I play is original pieces, and I play mostly kind ofational music that is channeled in from what I feel energy I pick up in the room, energy from other people, energy from maybe the environment or even the piano that I play. So it's really special for me when I get the opportunity to play. And there are so many different styles of playing, one style that I don't play too much as and I have to apologize. I have a cat that's trying to get into a cabinet, So if you hear some banging, I don't know what they're looking for. But I'm not going to interrupt the show because I have your attention and I'm on fire here and I just want to keep going. So we're gonna ignore my cat and we're going to go back to the piano. So when I play piano, I kind of just play, like I said, what I channel in and I don't have any rhyme or reason other than what I feel. There is a style of piano that I find myself not playing enough, and that kind of piano.

4:16 Jazz jazz is so beautiful and it is a form of music that is improvised, and I'm so excited to vite guest mister. Steve Samdner, and he is a jazz teacher that I've met online. And there are so many great opportunities to work with him to learn jazz. It's actually on my list of to do and for my listeners out there that are interested in learning jazz, let me introduce you to mister Steve Sandner. Are you backstage, Steve? Hello, Hello, how are you? Thank you so much for joining us today.

5:03 Thank you, Lisa, Thank you for having me. No, no, I'm here hosting in Florida. I know you said you are in Michigan, and our listeners, depending on where they're tuning in from, whether it be another state, another country. I've said in past shows, no matter where you are in the world, in your community, in their community, there's. Always a musical niche of, let's say, open mics or venues or schools, music schools that students can connect with. Although a lot of us work and we have full time a part time schedules, and we find it easier sometimes to take a class online or be able to do that easier on the side, when it's like at home and maybe you know, ten o'clock at night, you just get on the piano or or an instrument and get online to connect your feature. There's so much I know about you, but there's so much I do not know about you. So please share with us kind of like your background and the jazz. You're all that jazz.

6:07 I should say, well, I grew up with piano because my dad was a piano player. In fact, before he got married, he was a full time piano player. And then when he married my mom, my mom didn't think that was a dignified profession for a married man, so he ended up playing piano part time. He almost never missed playing on a Friday Saturday night. And I saw this enthusiasm and I thought, wow, that looks like a great thing to do. So he started teaching me, and I kept playing eventually found my way into playing jazz. Now, did you start off as a classical pianist? I did. I studied classical piano from a young age, and when I was in college I major I didn't major in piano, actually I majored in trumpet, but I took classical piano lessons and learned some of the classical repertoire in college. But then I soon morphed into playing jazz after that.

7:06 Okay, what seemed to be one of the biggest other than your dad being a player, And you've seen that passion and you wanted to kind of grow that more in your life. What really inspired you to take that route to go jazz music opposed to opposed to but it's different than classical, So what drew you to that? Well, it is my dad played a little bit of classical, but he was He liked to improvise too, and he could. He had a good ear. He could play a song by ear, usually after hearing it on the radio. And I saw him sing that and I thought, well, I can do that too, maybe. So when I I was lucky to have teachers in my high school band director, for instance, Bill Laski had played professional jazz performance before he became a band director, so he was very helpful in inducing me and others to the world of jazz, which I loved.

8:11 So with that, I know, you teach and then you also perform. Right, Yeah, I am. I have a program called Out of the Piano and it's a mastermind group. We meet on Zoom twice a week and it's open to people who have some experience on jazz piano who want to improve their jazz piano skills and it's very nurturing group and a very positive group of us who get together to help each other and I helped direct them through the through the methodology, and through the course structure into learning jazz pieces, little ear training, and other means of learning jazz improvisation.

8:52 Now I know I. Watched a little bit of one of your introductions or webinar. I have to watch the webinar again. I meant to watch it again this morning, but didn't get a chance to. I have seen it before. It's been a while. But you have three secrets, right, Well, it's learning learning how to what why. Jazz pianists have trouble learning to improvise when they're starting, and sometimes if you're a classical player, you don't really know how to start improvising. So I don't want to divulge completely the secret. But if you're playing a song like, well, do you know the song blue Moon? I do? I don't know. I would need I don't know how to play it without the sheet music too.

9:36 Sometimes you'll see kids or sometimes even adults chomping away at the at the left had boom blue Moon, you saw me standing alone without a dream in my heart. That's the melody. And if you follow the melody, and if you learn the melody, you can use that as a guide for your improvisation. That's one of the little secrets you can and you can take little tiny variations at first, and then you keep expanding and expanding and expanding op the melody until you have improvisations that sound good as you practice doing it. So more or less, it's from what I'm understanding, and I teach piano. That's the only instrument I teach. However, I do focus on reading, but I also want to make it known to every single student of mine that ear training is so important. So we kind of derail from the note reading to the listening. But it's so it's such a different part of the brain. Can you share anything or any information on that topic or is that something you don't come.

10:45 On my brain? Well, sometimes you can overthink it. I know once when you learn the theory, and jazz theory is slightly different from classical music theory. There's, of course there's a lot of similarities, but in jazz theory, you're learning you go from three note chords to four note chords, and then you add other notes to the five or six note chords, and you're dealing with ninth and flat and ninth and augmented elevens. But it sounds complicated, but once you actually see it and hear it, you kind of begin to understand it. And if you know the chords, you can you can help use that as a helpful guide in your improvisations. But you can start before that by just following the melody as a guide and then creating very simple picks that will go along with the harmonies.

11:44 So, for our music listeners out there that are familiar with chords and are familiar with reading chord charts, is that more or less what you kind of work with a chord chart? Well, there's a thing called a lead sheet. A lead sheet of those who don't know, is it's not like a sheet music where both right hand and left hand are written out with all the notes. Ality only has the melody of the song, and then it has chord symbols written above the melody. That it's which is a learning process to know the chord symbols. But once you know the chord symbols, you're able to formulate your own chord voicings. And a voicing is how you place the notes of the chord under your fingers, and you can start with very simple voicings and then progress from there.

12:34 There is a step by step process that I have within my group that we use to learn songs, and we start with simpler songs and then you can graduate to more complex songs like Colonious Monk or something like that. Colonious Monk is definitely one of my favorites. But yeah, it's a little bit that it goes into a little bit more are deeper. So I don't I don't want you. I want you to feel comfortable in sharing what you'd like to share with us and with with teaching with your program, Like I'm I have a class I take and it's like a monthly fee for the year. So is your online program Is it like a set goal like in six months and a year? Is there like a program within a time space that you have it limited or extended for?

13:33 Well, everybody wants to get results and they're playing and everybody has their own goals. Mostly the goals of people in my group are when they want to learn songs and then they want to improve that by learning the songs in a better way and improving their rhythm, improving their harmonies and voicings, and it takes practice. There's that's one thing that is stressed by any genre of music is you need to put in the practice time every day, and it doesn't it doesn't come without practice. Let's put it that way. Sure, Now, well I don't You probably don't know, and I don't know that the listeners know, and maybe they have because maybe I've said it before. I started playing when I was five. I started as a classical pianist, and I took years and years of lessons, and then I rebelled when I was a teenager and then eventually went back to playing, and I did. I really did not have a musical inspiration in my family, so I kind of just went on a whim of my parents wanted me to play, and that was kind of the reason why I took lessons and why I played. I'm thankful for today. I can't say I loved practicing growing up, but I love practicing now because it's a different understanding.

14:54 And I do try and teach this as well, how to practice right, because we're not taught how to practic is we're taught how to learn the instrument and how to learn how to read. But then you're like, okay, go home and learn it. So learning how to practice is a big deal for me to express when I work with my students. With that being said, my question for you is you've both you and I we didn't start out where we are today, okay, and you have so much more experience than I do. And you know, I'm privileged to have you on my show today. My questions are, you know when you first began learning, and you did mention a little something here and there earlier, but when you started learning and when you were taking practice, when you were practicing, when you were climbing the ladder to where you are now, what was it that helped you motivate you to continue going?

15:56 Well, that's a that's a good question. I think it was listening to great music and listening to the great jazz pianists. And I did that from a young age. My dad had the old seventy eight records the great pianists like Art Tatum. You listen to ar Tatum, you go, that can't be possible that that's only one person playing this piece. And he'd also had classical music. And you listen to this great music and you wonder what it's like sharing this being able to play it yourself and sharing your performance with other people. Maybe a little bit of an ego thing, but you want to you know, you want to be able to How can I possibly learn how to do that? And then you realize that, you know, it takes take some practice. And then, for instance, when I was in second and third grade that at our particular school, they had this old, upright piano. They would roll from room to room, and I was always eager to share my song, that latest song that i'd learned, my little simple song with the class and show off a little bit. You get once you hear the response, you know, there's there's nothing like it.

17:08 That's true. That's true. You probably did that too, right, you played for your school class? No, because and this is silly, well maybe not so silly. I growing up, I remember I had five different piano teachers, and most of them quit on me, except for the last one. She got sick, not because of me, but I remember specifically taking lessons and I wanted to just play and improvise and do my own thing, and the teachers would get so frustrated with me. They're like, no, you have to learn the foundations, you have to learn the classicals, because that's what came before us. That's what started us all out. So being a child, I just didn't like that answer. So but but I do understand it now, I do understand what that feeling is like. There, I have another question for you, and this is something I forget to ask a lot of times in my show.

18:05 I know, but I know my listeners, not all of them. Now, will you share with us a little bit of your experience with how you get out there and get gigs? You know, you've learned what you've learned. You know what you know, and you have the opportunity to be on stage and to show off, as we call it, but not really. We're doing what we love, so it's not it's a pleasurable show off, I think to say, But you know, what are some of your secrets of getting gigs like you play on Macana Island and other places. Well, that's another very good question, because that is key, isn't it. I want to get gigs. You want to get gigs there maybe to make a little money was always good, but you also you want the audience response.

18:51 I remember one of my first gigs was I think I was in high school, maybe fourteen fifteen years old, and one of the older guys in schools. Hey, they're having a black party. Why don't we go down there and play some music? And I go and we didn't even think about getting paid. But we had a little hat, literally a hat sitting there and we played music. I don't know how good we sounded, but the people were accepting of us. They went with it, and we must have been somewhat entertaining. I think we made fifteen dollars a piece, okay with that black party. That seemed like a huge amount. So, and then sometimes you create your own gigs to play, like open mic nights. If you're going to go to an open mic night, people will hear you play and they'll say, hey, my i've you know, you play piano and I play violin or I play saxophone.

19:45 Why don't we try to get a gig over at such and such a place and you just keep trying. I love that, and I've mentioned in previous shows open mic venues is such a warm, welcoming community of people and music for friends that become lifetime friends because you're just there to support each other and inspire each other. Right, I don't think it matters what state you're in or what country you're in it's we have that. Well, I don't know about every country, but I can speak for the United States. We're here, so I know various people in various states have the opportunity for that, right. I think it's a good way to get exposed. And even if you just know one or two songs, you can go to an open mic night and get practice.

20:31 Inform me, yes would happen. And you never know who's in the audience. You never know who you're going to meet, and you never know if there's you know, somebody having a party that might invite you to play, or different venues. Now you play on Macina Island. Is that something that you just fell into? Is that something that you you strive to get there? Or asking the right question? Well, yeah, that's another interesting question. When I first started out, I was in I got my first real gig that was substantial. I was in my early twenties and I went through an agent and he was happy with the work I was doing. He said, you know, someday, he also booked the Grand Hotel on Macina Island. So someday you're going to play up at the Grand Hotel on Macan Island. I said, no way. I don't want to be trapped on an island, and we kept arguing about it. Well, many many years later, after agent unfortunately had passed away, I ended up being in need of a gig. Guy called the music director at the Grand Hotel and he booked me right away for a few nights, and then after a few years I've been there five seasons.

21:45 Now. Wow wow. And that's so for some of you that don't know, but I think most people know. It's a phenomenal movie with Christopher Reeves and Jane Seymour, right. Yes, somewhere in time, somewhere in. Time, that's one of my favorite movies. Well, Jane Seymour comes to the island sometimes for some of the reunions for the movie. So one time she came with a group of oh twenty five people, and they had a private dining room and they had assigned me to play piano for their private dinner in the and so I started playing very softly, and Jane Seymour came into the room and she's looking radiant, you know, as she does, and she came over to the piano and said, you're playing is beautiful. And I was, you know, getting my ego was up a little bit, and twenty seconds later she went to the banquet manager said I don't want piano at my dinner party. So the banquet manager had to come over and tell me to leave.

22:52 I still got paid, but I got fired by Jane Seymour. Well, maybe just wasn't It wasn't her day that day. I think we're more interested in talking about the nostalgia of having worked on the movie than they were in having piano music at their dinner. I guess right, Perhaps I didn't take it that personally. It's okay. So I don't know if in your area, and I don't know in other states, but I'm guessing I know here in Florida. When we perform out somewhere, depending on where we're performing or who we're performing for, whether it be a restaurant venue or a private affair or a club, the pay is always different. And is that the same for you in your area or do you find it you're kind of locked into what you have going and that it's just a consistent.

23:47 Well, the pay can very widely. You can find gigs that are the pay. For instance, if you're playing at a restaurant and you're playing there at two or three days a week, it's going to pay less per night than it would be if you're playing a private party or a wedding or something like that. So the pay can vary by very wide swings. I know that some of the jazz musicians, when we were playing jazz, which the kind of music we wanted to play, we would you said you were talking about how to get a gig, we would go to a restaurant and say, you know, we want to play jazz. We don't really care. We want to be paid something, but we're not trying to make a full dollar amount, but we want to be able to play jazz, and we'll we're pretty confident we can get at least some following. And sometimes we used to play in the old days for I mean, fifteen dollars a night wasn't as much when you got to the you know, the eighties and nineties, nineteen eighties, nineteen nineties.

24:48 But we would do it and then we sometimes we'd pack the place and the restaurant owner was happy, and we were happy because we got to play the kind of music we liked and they didn't tell us we had to play this or that. You want more, Neil Diamond, we don't want us so much jazz. If you're getting paid a higher dollar amount, you go along with what manager wants you to do. Yes. And I'm asking these questions because I know musician listeners out there, musician friends there. I know conversations come up about getting paid, and then I know, the bigger the band, the more it gets, you know, broken down. So it's not you know, a place is gonna maybe five hundred dollars, but you have five bandmates. You got to split that between five plus you know the tips.

25:37 So it's I'll speak for myself as a musician. I play because I get to and if I get an opportunity to play and get paid for it, that's really exciting. That's actually my goal. But it's not like you may agree with me. It's a juggle. Like we're musicians, but we also have like I'm a teacher, you're a teacher. So it's not like a one job job, and it's not even a job. It's fun. Right. Well, there's like you like we've been talking about, there's a wide range. I know some I've known some excellent jazz musicians in New York for instance, or you could rate them as world class players. But they're willing to go out and play a jazz gig for forty bucks per person. Now that seems like they're really lucky to make their guess money in parking, you know, for that, but they get a chance to play with their friends.

26:34 And then if you go and play a wedding, you know, you could make closer to a thousand dollars per person. Sure, that's a wide variation. Yes, I mean, unless I'm going back a little bit. Unless like you have this sea these seasons, you've been going back and forth to Macina Island. I mean, that's a consistent and you're so lucky and so privileged to be able to have that opportunity to do that. And you know, it's just I guess, being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people and just when the stars aligned, they align. Yeah, it's nice to have the network that you can grow into a network of musicians who are helping each other get gigs. That that's also helpful too. When I called the music director on Macona Island, I had a good reference. He didn't even ask to hear me play, He just tooked me for a couple of weeks, right on the spot. So oh nice. Maybe I've been to clubs before where they don't ask to hear me play.

27:40 They said, they said, well, you look like a musician. You look like you know what you're doing. Well, that's a pretty nice compliment. I guess. I guess. Now, what specifically do you love to play when you're out? I mean, do you have the freedom to choose what you're going to play, or do you put practice into your play personally or do you just you just know and you just play. I love all types of music. I listen to pop music and rock and rhythm and blues and from all eras, but I find myself really drawn to the Great American Songbook. I don't know if you've heard this. Yes, we used to just call them standards when I was playing my first gigs, because I'm old enough to When I was very young to play for a crowd, they wanted World War Two songs, and then those were That was kind of the jazz era, and those old standards are still being played today. You still hear songs like over the Rainbow and as Time Goes By and songs like that that are standards today and there's it goes very deep.

28:49 The song composers like Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin just wrote such great songs that they're still being played today. I'm finding I have to mix in some more contemporary, so I call him contemporary songs. But Billy Joel and Elton John to me are more contemporary, even though there's you know, a few decades old now, but it's a newer style. And if you get past nineteen eighty or nineteen ninety, I don't know too many recent songs. Well, I mean, I think being alive in today's day and age and having grown up, I don't know your age, but I don't know that we're in the same bracket.

29:35 And if we are, we are, and if we're not, we're not. But the fact that we're what's that we're much younger maybe. But I also am older than I look, so I've been told, well, I mean, I know my age, but I'm told I don't look my age. So I've been playing over forty five years not to give my age away. But so anyway, my point is that we've grown up in the times where music came to life. Music, I mean the twenties and the thirties, the Roaring twenties, the Roaring thirties, that's when it all started, and it just snowball. And the fifties, the sixties, seventies, eighties, the nineties, I mean, those were in my opinion, the best of years for music because after I mean, icons out there, musicians, artists were able to express themselves, and it's we continue to listen to like even what you said, like the old classical pieces, we still listen to them today and we learn from that. We still look to those beginner musicians, those beginner artists as our as our idols in a way, because I mean I still teach Beethoven, I'm still teaching Chopin and the ones you mentioned as well. I mean, it's just so much and it's so beautiful that we get this variation, and then we get to choose what

31:09 we can play. Right, and there always will be the classical music as the foundation for learning piano. For me, it definitely was because I studied classical music. I played Chopin and Mozart, and I played even one list piece which was called once a Spiro, which has very difficult technique, and then I started playing jazz, but I never took jazz piano lessons. I've learned jazz kind of on my own after having the classical foundation. And I'm one of my teachers when I was young, in sixth grade or so, said, if you can learn to play classical music, you'll be able to play jazz. Well, I'm not so sure that's absolutely true for everybody, but it was to it for me because I learned the classic technique and you learn something about the class the harmonies and the compositions, and then learning jazz was came naturally to me after that.

32:13 Sure that makes sense. And I know, I know you're not going to share with us the secrets, but. Well I'm open, okay, okay. What can you share with us? So can you? Okay? So let's say someone wants us sign and share. Share what what you wish to share and what you don't it's okay too, I want you to and what what you want to tell our listeners. If someone today were to sign up with your class, right and you're they want to learn jazz, so can you give us just a brief, a very brief synopsis. I don't know why I can't say that word of kind of like how you were pro you're teaching to teach that style of music.

33:04 I mean you said a little bit earlier, but well. One of the first songs we work on, and a lot of jazz teachers used this song as the introductory piece to learning jazz because it has that construction that's so helpful. It's Autumn Leaves. I don't know if you know that song, yes, you play it yourself. Well, I'm not. I have to work on that. I have to work on a tuning my brain more to jazz to be playing that. I've been playing more like Reva McIntyre lately and different styles of billy Joel McIntyre. Wow, that's interesting. I was playing in Sedona, Arizona, at an Italian restaurant and Reva McIntyre came in and sat right in the chair right next to the piano.

33:54 Oh wow. I could not think of a Reva McIntire song played. I couldn't think of any first sis. So I was but she was nice to me and said thank you anyway. So, but if you take the song, I'm getting off subject. I'm sorry, but you know, okay, if you're playing a song like Autumn Leaves, the melody starts on E E E, F E F R G C. That's the first four notes of the melody. But uh right, and then that hiacy you'll go to the upper CE but the autumn leaders and when you hit that upper C, you'll play an A minor seventh cord in your left hand, and if you play it in the root position, you'll play a C E G. All white notes. Okay, So, and then when you play the next short phrase or as you hold the C, you will go to a D seventh in the D seventh is is a four note chord we don't have. I don't know how technical you want to, how you want to get into.

35:07 This, but I don't. I don't want to. I don't want to make this about me. I want you know, I want to make this for my listeners so that they're understanding kind of what your approach is. I'll just give you the overall bird's eye view, so it's understood even if someone doesn't understand music. You the first approach is to learn the four note chords. In jazz, you most often have four note chords. In traditional music theory classical music theory, you'll you'll start with the triads, which are three note cords. So, but you you learn your chords and you play them in the root position.

35:51 That means the note that names the chord is on the bottom, and then you play the melody. And with us, you're reading from a lead sheet. You you have the the sketch of the melody in front of you, and you play the A men or seventh four not carde D seventh major seventh and then a C major seventh. And once you learn those chords in the root position and you can play it with the melody, it actually sounds like music. You'll get You'll get a nice, nice sounding melody almost right away with that particular song Autumn Leaves. So that's what we would start with. Earning your four note chords and playing them in what's called the root position.

36:32 The root positions mean means the name of the chord is is the note on the bottom, and then you can then you can change around the notes a little bit and get different combinations make it sound even better. After that, Now, in the. Group classes that you have online, like kind of like a mastermind type of zoom, are you do you work with like so many students at a time, do you do you private lessons do you have, Like if it's class one and you have ten students, I'm asking a few different Sorry, within. The class, there are students at different levels, for sure, and they all help and inspire each other, because it never hurts for the more advanced students to go over the basics. And then the students who are maybe just starting out or have less experience, they'll they might be hearing some stuff explain to the advanced students a little bit over their heads, but yet they get exposed to some of the terminology or some things that might that might stick with them for the future. Okay, So it works like that.

37:39 And then you also do private lessons. I don't do one on one lessons anymore, except occasionally with someone in the class who if they need a little extra help on something particular or special, I'll work with them occasionally like that. But I don't do ongoing one on one lessons anymore. And for those listeners that are just tuning in, you mentioned that you because we said this earlier, you have in your online courses you meet twice a week, right, okay, and there's a specific time and then whether they're in Europe or anywhere in the United States. And that's the beauty of having a group lesson lesson online because you can be anywhere in any location. I've had students in Canada and Boston and California all meeting at the same time, and it would be even possible if someone from Europe wanted to join, that would be possible.

38:37 And all the lessons and classes are recorded, so if somebody misses the session, they'll have a recording of the session available. And they develop a friendship and develop a helpfulness together that gives you sort of an emotional safety while you're trying out things, because, as you know, when your practice is something at first, it doesn't always sound pretty at first. You're you're working at it, and it's great to have a support group like that that will help you and encourage you to get past that. Yes, and then what I mentioned earlier, a lot of us work right, so they might we might not be available at a specific time. You mentioned that it is recorded.

39:24 And then if students have questions because they've watched the recorded version, are you easily able to like, are they access to you? How do I say this? Contact you for questions or email? Well, during the two sessions two weekly sessions always available and the members of the group do ask a lot of questions then. And also we have a dedicated website that's private that they can post things and ask questions, and I stay on time up with that and answer their questions right away or answer them at the next live session.

40:05 Yeah, that was my next question. Do you have like a private like Facebook page or but you answer that. It's a Facebook type page where you can post different things, and you can also access all the previous recorded lessons for the past year and a half. And there's a core course structure that has videos and PDFs where they can review things. And we like to stress also the basics learning your scales and chords. In also encouraging you to practice little inspirational videos and inspirational performances of various artists, which is a very helpful thing when you're learning p and I'm sure you do. You listen to your favorite artists and you get inspired.

40:51 Yes, yes, And I also will say in your favor you do send out because I get them. You send out some fabulous emails, send out some fabulous emails with terrific jazz tips, or you reference it to like a flneous monk or or someone else. Right, And if you want to be on that email list, you can go to that link you were showing on the screen before, or you can just go to Artofthepiano dot com artofthepiano dot com. You'll find a link to join that email list, and I'll send out tips a few if I'm lucky, a few times a week. Yes, and they're fabulous. I love receiving them and I always learned something from it.

41:34 Well, thank you. I'm glad to hear that. Ye hear that feedback. That's good to hear. Yes, because you're you're teaching is not the common like I'm you know, I'm well, you don't know, like some of the classes. I still take classes because it helps me just to learn more and to be a better teacher and to be a better performer. But your your teaching is not the main stream. And that's why I'm so excited to also so have you on the show today, because your approach is different and your emails aren't the regular. Like we're playing a classical song, you go back to, like I said, like an R Tatum or a felonious monk, and you just go back to the roots, and not everybody does that. So I really value those little tidbits of lessons that you give well thanks.

42:23 And I like to vary the complexity too. Sometimes I'll get complex into a felonious monk song, and if that email's too complicated for you, don't worry, because in a next email or two, I'll have something that's more simplified, more entry level. And if it sounds too simple for you, don't worry. I'll have a complex email for you coming up pretty soon. So I try to vary it like that too. And you know what, I remind myself with the things that seem a little over my head, I look at it as I'm learning something I didn't know before. So listeners out there, if you're reading something that you're like, oh, I have no idea what this is, just take it kind of like in stride, because it's you didn't know it before and now you do. So it's it's something a little tidbit. I've told myself, like, don't get frustrated and dismiss it because you don't know it. It's just something new, so you know, be open to it. Be open to you the different approaches of teaching and the different things that you that we don't know, so so thank you, Steve. We're almost at a time. Are there any last minute words that you'd like to share with us?

43:33 And also how our students our listeners can contact you. Well, you can contact me through that website or you can email me. Feel free to email me steveatsandnermusic dot com and be happy to answer any questions or issues you have. Also, remember there's no substitute for practice. Even a little bit of practice every day is going to be helpful. Yes, I agree, I agree. Well, thank you so much, Steve, and we will we will talk again soon and I will definitely share some of the information you had emailed me. I look forward to sharing that with the link of the recorded show.

44:16 Well, thank you, Lisa, thank you for having me. It was delightful talking to you. Thank you. Yes, same here and happy New Year and new year too. All right, thank you so much, Steve. That was great. And for those of you that are just tuning in, we've had Steve Sandner on our shows today. He's a jazz piano player who plays other instruments. He offers online online classes and the art of playing piano I think it is uh the name of his his contact. I get it confused. I told him I teach with another school called the Art of Piano Playing, So in my brain I get it mixed up. But that set aside.

44:57 I will post on my Facebook page h Lisa Eva Goold a contact for Steve Sander, and I will also post a recorded version of our show today. In the meantime, I wish everyone out there are very happy and healthy and prosperous New Year, and make good choices. This is the year where we all get to be reminded that we're all powerful and that we all inspire each other.

45:39 Especially music. Music has an inspiration in all of us, matter what you feel or what you think, is a song that you are touched by all the time. Mm hmm. Tune in next week, find out who my guests will be with me and well I know you know, so tuned in help me keep music alive