TPP S1 E7: Andrew Ingkavet--Founder and CEO of The Musicolor Method

Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of The Piano Pod. I am Eric Hunter.

I'm Yukimi Song.

And I'm Clara Jones.

If you are just joining us for the first time, The Piano Pod is now a bi-monthly podcast where we interview some of the brightest talents in the industry. Each episode features a guest speaker who's making bold new innovations that have the potential to change the way we think about piano or even music in general. Today our guest speaker is Andrew Inkovet, piano teacher, entrepreneur, and the creator of the revolutionary new Musicolor Method. Andrew, thank you for joining us today.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Yay, guys, great to see you all on this cold blustery day here in New York City.

Yes, yeah, it is brutal outside. So Andrew, um, we're going to get into the details in a little bit, but just very briefly, what is the Musicolor Method? What's it about?

Uh, Music Color Method is all about, uh, giving more access to more kids, uh, music. So it's an adaptive, inclusive, and fun curriculum. And, um, we started this in my living room, just me and my son, when he started asking for lessons. Uh, and I didn't realize that there was kind of a gap in music education at the time, uh, where there was really nothing I could find for a preliterate kid, um, to learn music and enjoy music, except for, you know, that you have the clap-along, sing-along kind of things. But he got bored of that really fast, so this became a homeschooling project that has now been, uh, shared with the world.

That's fantastic. And so, uh, how does the color portion come into it?

So color is being used as educational scaffolding. So what I mean by that is that we're— we directly label what we want our kids to do. So it's putting colors on, um, even our fingertips with washable markers, colors on the keys, and then color notation that looks like colored blocks. So then it becomes as easy as a color matching game, which any 3, 4-year-old can do. And you don't have to actually say, oh, this is a C and it's below the staff and it's got this little line through it and this is called the clef. And it's like, what? This is very simple. You see the red thing is the red key and you have a red finger. How many times do we have the red box on the page? Oh, there's 5. That means you play it 5 times. Oh, I get it. We can keep going really fast. And then we just steer them because they have their own motivation now to practice and they can keep going. And it's much easier to steer a body in motion than one that is completely stalled, right?

Yes. Absolutely. Well, I want to ask Andrew, so before you created this color method, which I think it's just incredible, when you are looking for a teacher or a method for your 3-year-old son, right, in the beginning, what did you discover or did not discover in terms of like method books?

Yeah, so first of all, I live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, which is a very child-friendly neighborhood, so I figured there's got to be child services here. You know, people have probably had the same need. So I started just asking other teachers, can I sign up? You know, I even met with some famous pianists who were like, oh, we don't take anybody until we're, you know, teenagers. You know, the higher the level of the pianist, it seems like the higher the level of the student they want. So I had gone to school to be a music teacher back at NYU. I actually had a scholar and education scholarship, and— but I never made it my focus. So it was just like kind of like telling me life was tired of telling me to go back and be a teacher. And this was a great activity to bond with my son as well. So for sure, I started looking in the Brooklyn Public Library. They have a massive collection.

Oh, I remember that.

It's beautiful. Um, too bad we can't get there right now.

That's right.

But the, uh, so there's tons of method books. There's also tons of scores if you're ever looking for obscure scores.

Yep.

Um, I ordered hundreds of dollars of books on Amazon and I, the closest I came to was the Suzuki Method, which was okay. I see that he's getting kids to play first. Um, but then there's like almost, there's like a, another gap between playing and reading. So I was like, okay, I, I can try to bridge that. And that's when I started playing around with color because I had spent 10 years as an information user experience designer doing websites for American Express, uh, wow, Manhattan Bank, all these So, you know, in that world, when you're looking at a screen, where you put a button means something, right? Everything has a reason to be. There's real estate on the screen. It's the same thing on the page. Everything on the page has to have a reason to be there. Otherwise, why put it there? And what I realized from the world of UX design the, the more concrete you can have a single audience, the more clear your message can be. So what my big epiphany was looking at these method books, most of these method books had 3 audiences on the same page. It was like notes for the teacher, notes for the parent, and then something for the student. And even just yesterday, I would have a 6-year-old came over socially distanced, masked lesson. And, um, I begged the parent to please, please bring her in because I'm having a hard time with a 6-year-old over the screen, you know. And I'm showing her, uh, a lesson book. I'm not going to mention names, and it's a great one. I use it for a lot of students. And she's looking at the page and there's a teacher's duet under there. She's like, oh, what the heck is that? I don't want to— I I don't know what that is.

Yeah, they get intimidated by those.

Yeah.

And she's just like, I don't want to do that.

I see.

Yeah.

So that is a big problem. I can understand why publishers do that. It's, you know, the cost of paper and shipping is very expensive.

Right.

Which is also what I discovered when I started making method books myself. And I really wanted to stick to this. Okay. One page is for the parent. Or the teacher and one page for the kid. And then I'm like, oh my God, I can't fit any more songs because the cost is going to be just ridiculous. It can be like $50 for my book.

Yeah, it's interesting. You know what, Clara, let me interrupt. Yeah, go ahead. I'm just curious because you just mentioned, uh, experiences at American Express or whatever, and then you, you have this, you know, music educational background at NYU. So please tell us about your background. Um, it seems like you have many interesting experiences in the past. So just—

yeah, it's been a lifetime trying to figure out how to explain it. The best I've come up with is that I've had a, a, uh, a, uh, wide-angle career path with a lot of interest, a lot of parallel paths. So I went to NYU with a double major in music education and jazz performance. I am not really a jazz guy. I was a rock maniac. I had hair down to my waist. I was a heavy metal— playing guitar. So, but I realized I wanted to learn jazz because, you know, those guys can play anything. And I did learn a ton. Um, so at the end of the day, I, uh, I ended up getting very involved with the music business in New York City. And interning at some amazing places, eventually working on the marketing team that brought you artists like Guns N' Roses, um, Tracy Chapman. We did— who's not— we did, uh, Anthrax, Megadeth, all these really toxic bands.

Oh my gosh.

Uh, my first day on the job was, uh, going to Metallica backstage, and I was like, oh my God. Yeah, you can ask my wife about our first date at Metallica.

Oh yeah, I want to hear that story.

You had a headache.

And I remember you even working in Hong Kong for a while, right? Yes.

So that led me to, uh, uh, actually at that job I actually was a— I've always been kind of self-starting and I started learning how to use desktop publishing software and one of my bosses was one of the first Mac guys in New York City. So I became the editor of this newsletter that then published our research on heavy metal.

Wow.

MTV's Headbangers Ball.

Oh, okay.

And that's when I started hanging out with the MTV folks, and I started writing scripts for them. And then I said to them, hey, you know what, I should actually be hosting the show. I'm writing the scripts. And long Story short, it turned into me becoming one of the first VJs when they launched in Asia and moved me to Hong Kong. So I spent 5 years in Hong Kong, only 1 as a VJ, but then I was doing other things. I started film scoring while I was there. I started—

Wow.

Doing things with the Mac Users Group and getting into technology. That's when we, we started an internet marketing business. Which led me into that world. So it's always been lots of things going on. I've also been an actor off-Broadway with the Panthers in Red.

Wow.

Oh, I didn't know about that.

Yeah, I was in, uh, some independent movies and stuff. Yeah, it's a lot of, a lot of things going on. But I think at the end of the day, my, my real, uh, reason for being is teaching. It took me all those years to have my son say, you know, "Why don't you teach me?" See, that's very important too, right?

We have children, so we sometimes get inspired.

It changed my life for the better.

That's really amazing.

Andrew, I wanted to jump in and say I love the story of your career path because it's so non-traditional, but every bit of it you know, has a role to play, right? And that's why I love this method so much, because, you know, coming from this diverse background that is very non-traditional, you were able to just step into the piano world and see what was out there and see kind of obvious gaps that I think a lot of us have recognized and felt for some time. I wanted to show everybody what you were talking about before. This is the First volume. I don't know if this is an older edition. Have you put out a new one since then?

I keep updating minor tweaks. So that's still valid, yeah.

Okay.

So I've been using this with my son who's 5 and a half. And just to give an example of what you're talking about, like here's the first piece in the book. And for anybody who's watching this on video, you can see it. Of course, for audio, I'll describe it. But basically, you have the piece. Laid out in colored blocks and the title and a single illustration, and that's it. There's no extra information to confuse the young student. And then on the preceding page, you have the instructions for the parent or the teacher. So when you talk about, you know, graphic interface and the layout and how much of a difference that makes in the way we absorb the information, I mean, it's important at any age, but particularly for young kids, so.

I've, I've had some feedback where people felt like they didn't get to the reading on the staff fast enough, and there is a definite reason for that because they're just not ready. I mean, the original age group that I wrote this curriculum for was somewhere between 3 and 6 years old. You know, most of those kids are just not ready to think abstractly like that. Um, So it really depends on how old your student is. And also if they're, you know, obviously if they're a prodigy, some gifted Mozart, they can probably jump ahead, right?

Right.

Um, but yeah, most kids, if it's too hard, they hit this, this hill of like, oh, it's too hard. I don't want to do this. And then they quit. And that's what we're trying to combat. We're trying to get them to like, This is fun. Every time you come, it's a win. And every time you go home, you know exactly what to do without anyone sitting with you. And then, so then you can keep them for years and years and years. Most of my students at Park Slope Music Lessons, my school, stay with us 5, 10, even 15 years. Uh, so my son, as I told you, was the student number 1. He's now, he's now 18. And he's at Brown University, so he's no longer our student. So, but that's been a nice long ride.

So for me, this method is relatively new, right? I heard about this, you know, recently, and I want to know, what is this color come into? Like, I mean, like the very specific, how does it work exactly? Each color represent a different key?

That's how I just put, um, this rainbow on the keys. The only difference I made was I tried to make it From a UX perspective, I tried to make it a little bit easier to see the difference between like purple and indigo or things like that. So I put gray as one of the colors in there. And so as we start, kids start to associate, okay, C is red.

Right.

So they can start using that as their visual language to compose. Immediately. Um, and then, and you know, when I learned solfège, I always thought of, uh, movable dough. Oh, actually, let me ask you guys, what is it for you, movable or fixed?

Fixed.

Fixed.

Fixed.

I had to learn both, um, because of the way.

So I just said, who would ever want fixed? That's crazy, right? Because I don't know, that I always thought movable just made more sense to me, you know, do, re, mi, fa, so, and I just move it around. But then as I started talking to more people, and then I started noticing my students, they're constantly fixating. Red is do and do is C. Yeah. And that just makes it easier. So I started asking some of the best sight readers I know, who— teachers in my studio, my music director at the church, who's a Amazing sight reader. And they said, oh, it's fixed. I was like, I said, why fixed? And they were like, because how can you not have fixed for 20th century music? There is no do. You don't even know what do is, right? I was like, ah, that totally makes sense. But then it also just makes sense for the kids too now, because I can always sing do, do, di, re, ri, mi. Uh, And then they, they know exactly what I'm talking about, right?

I see.

So color becomes kind of the subs— is kind of the substitute for the note. But then in your question about keys and phrases, I actually used to use quite a bit this translucent colored tape.

Oh wow.

And I've started— so for the more advanced kids who start getting onto the staff, Right. I like, I like to show them patterns right away. So we look at a pattern, say we see the first phrase in the A section, so look at this, and I, I'll just use any color, you know, right? But then I'll say, where do you see that phrase again? And we like translucent color tape, it's like a highlighter basically, and put it there like, oh my God, look at that, A section, A section. Or this is A1, right? Why? Because— so by just having these big blocks of color, you've now organized patterns into chunks. And that's all about this pattern recognition that we do. That was— that has been super successful with—

That's really clever.

Andrea, I wanted to ask you, I know Yukimi has some questions she wants to ask you about the business of Musicolor and promoting the method. But before we get to that, you mentioned scaffolding earlier. And I wanted you to talk more about that concept because that was something that I learned about when I was in graduate school too, and I think it's a really important concept for teaching and also ties into kind of your philosophy about the method itself. So I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about those.

Yeah, um, great, great question, Mike. So my wife is a— she went to Teachers College, Columbia Teachers College, for early childhood, um, psychology, developmental psychology. So she was always— she's always teaching me these terms and things like that.

That's where I got it too.

Yeah, yeah, you went to Teachers College?

I went to TC.

Yeah, yeah, fantastic place. Um, it is. So scaffolding is, is— if you think about, you know, the buildings that are being built, they always build in like a little structure on the outside to help them get the stuff up there, right? So that's kind of a scaffolding. It's kind of a helping tool that is temporary and isn't taken away. Uh, I think about it like when we were teaching Alejandro, my son, to ride a bike. There was super expensive wooden bikes around there, out on the market, handmade from Netherlands for $500, no pedals, very low to the ground. And I saw that And I was like, oh my God, that is a brilliant use of scaffolding because basically you're getting them to focus only on balance first and then they can do the pedaling later, right? Once they have the balance. So it's the same thing I've applied. It's like, this is the balance bike method to teaching music on the piano. So first we get them playing and then we get them to start recognizing more abstract concepts, and then we start teaching them how to read. So it's more like a language, you know. It's— you don't teach, uh, kids, you know, grammar in the first language when they're learning a foreign language. Yes, you're listening, you're speaking back, you're telling stories, and then later on you're like, oh, that's what the word looks like, or that's how I write it. And there's always a difference in playing level and reading level, or speaking level and reading level, right? So it's much more akin to a language. So scaffolding is different than some people think of crutches, right? Even though crutches can be temporary, right? But if you, if you stay too long on your crutches, what happens? Is like you atrophy, right? If you have a broken leg and you never give up that crutch, you'll never actually get off the crutch, right? So that's the thing. I've had people criticize my colors without even understanding what the philosophy is. They said, oh, this is just a crutch, they're never going to get off that. I was like, no, we have 6 phases of notation that constantly progress further, further, further so that they're— by the time they're done with this, they're on the staff, they're reading sharp signs, they're reading flat signs, and then the colors just naturally fall away after time.

Yeah, I just want to jump in there, um, just to remind people, for anybody who's a professional musician who've been reading music all their life, um, it can, it can be difficult to like put ourselves back in the mind of a child. Those symbols are actually incredibly abstract. There's nothing about the symbol of a whole note that shows that it's long, you know. It's very, very unintuitive for kids, and that's why I think it requires 6 phases to, like, work up to that if you really want them to be comfortable along the way, especially since kids don't really read comfortably until quite a bit older, then they can start learning music.

So they call that the curse of knowledge. And that comes from, uh, an economist came up with that term, but it's very, very appropriate to anybody who's coaching or teaching anything in any field. You forget how hard it was to learn what you know, and then you start explaining with, with words that don't even make any sense yet, you know. It's like you're using your own language to explain a foreign language. Yeah. So everyone has to be mightily aware of the curse of knowledge. I realized that my training program, the one that, uh, Eric, you went through, and Yukimi went through a little bit, right? Uh, it was kind of a brain dump of massive amounts of information all front-loaded. And it's— as I was going through it again, because I'm redesigning it now, I'm breaking it into 3 different levels: basic, advanced, and pro. I'm seeing that I didn't follow my own advice, uh, that I've been giving to students of, of this whole, um, growth spiral, which I didn't even talk about yet, but I see it's this whole— I, I was guilty of the curse of knowledge saying, okay, you guys all, here it is, a gigantic, uh, box of information, go figure it out. I mean, it is a lifetime of information in there, but it, it could have been presented better. And that's what I'm so excited about right now because I've really streamlined it. Yeah, there's things that you don't need to know on day one. That would be super helpful on day 30. So that kind of thing.

That's where sequencing comes into play, right?

Yes, exactly.

Great. You know, one of the hats you wear is a businessman. So I, I kind of want to ask you about business side of the method. So a first question would be, so you chose to do licensing your method instead of just selling method books like traditional method does. So can you explain to us about?

Yeah. So it's really because it really does require a complete shift in mindset of like, if I just put out my sheet music right now, people are like, what the hell is this? I don't understand this. And there's like, it would take a long time to explain. Even the books that are out now, they're not really explaining everything. It's just like, like if you've gone through the program, this is great because you're like, oh, I have the tools here. It's already pre-printed. It's nicely bound and I can just present it to the parents and there's some little tips for the parents to help them. But there's a whole, it's like the tip of the iceberg. There's a whole gigantic thing. That it's really a series of mindset shifts, thinking outside the box. So one of my favorite thinkers is, he's got this book called Deep Focus. What's his name? I'll get it. Anyway, he was talking about how, you know, getting deep focus work done and he has another book about So Good. They can't ignore you. And you— I guess you can Google who wrote those books. Uh, he was saying that as you get to be an expert in any field or anything you do, you get to the edge of the world, right? And that's where you start to see the adjacent opportunities that you would never ever see until you got to the edge. And I feel fortunate that I've gotten to the edge in many different worlds, so then I could actually say, oh my God, that idea and that idea, they've never been combined before. Let me pull those in. And that has helped me, um, see a lot of business opportunities that were not available before. Um, plus I've taken a lot of, uh Training, coaching and training. One of my mentors calls it, uh, going through the process of putting on the green glasses. Like, all of a sudden you see opportunity everywhere that you never saw before.

It's like, oh yeah, yeah. By the way, I think the author was Cal Newport.

Yes, Cal Newport. Yes, fantastic. Um, that guy is brilliant and incredibly productive. He writes books as he's still a professor somewhere. And, um, yeah, one of my favorite guys.

It seems like you're selling your textbooks or the method books on Amazon, but you prefer that, you know, teachers would get training from your method.

Yeah, actually, that's an announcement that I'm gonna make here publicly, that those books are not going to be on Amazon for long. They're going to be pulled because there's a, uh, I'm going to have them only for licensed teachers through my website. And you can buy them in bulk at a discounted rate. Um, the other thing is that there is another opportunity for parents out there that's coming, and I can't announce yet.

Okay, okay, that's exciting.

Yes, great. So, um, how many countries you've reached out?

You know, that's, that's, uh, I— it's really hard to tell. I, um, because Using Amazon's distribution network was really surprising in how many people just discovered me without me ever even knowing. Like about a year ago, I woke up and found in my inbox an article from The Telegraph UK. There was a whole profile on me and I was like, what the— I was like, how did this happen? And I reached out to the author via Twitter and she was like, oh, thank you so much, I really appreciate the books. And I actually did this with my kids and she wrote about it.

And wonderful.

I also have a Spanish version of my first book and that has been selling really well actually in Mexico and South America. Uh, my wife is from Colombia, so, um, we We— I had a lot of help.

Oh great.

Plus one of my teachers helped me a lot too.

So Amazon was part of the marketing strategy, I guess, but marketing is a whole another, you know, ball game, um, even in business, you know. But everybody has to kind of become a salesperson of your own profession, you know what I mean? So what is your strategy? It seems like you, you have some professional advice, but as much as you can reveal your secret about marketing.

Oh wow, well, it's, it's, uh, wow, that's a, that's a huge question and it's not really a secret. It's just that most people completely, um, uh, I guess they underestimate what it is to run a business. Marketing should be like 60% of your day's activities.

Yeah.

Even if you're doing something else, like if you're a teacher, even, um, it's, it's the same thing. Like, uh, if you're starting a restaurant or something, or a bar or something, you should be like working on getting people to taste your food instead of worrying about how fancy your, your business card looks. Right? There's certain steps to the order. But the biggest problem I think most people— most music teachers that I've talked to have is that they think it's a one quick fix. They said, if I just knew how to get big on social media, or if I could just have one thing go viral. Yeah, it, it doesn't work that way because it— you've seen people go viral and they just, they, they last for a day and that's it, you know. You have to have something to take advantage of all these opportunities so that when opportunity does strike, then you actually can make it work. So marketing is really about crafting a clear message. And no, first of all, so here's— oh, okay, if you want to know the big secret behind marketing, this is huge, but I didn't understand this until I spent thousands, tens of thousands of dollars So the whole thing about marketing is about knowing who is your audience first.

Yes.

Right? Specific audiences, not multiple audiences, just one audience. Pick one audience, make that your king audience. Then figuring out what is the offer you're giving them and why is it such a great thing? And then figure out the messaging around it, how to tell that story. And most people start with like trying to tell this story but not being clear about the audience. So it's like it doesn't connect, you know. But when I started teaching, I made Park Slope Music Lessons. I said, okay, very clear, my audience is Park Slope parents just like me in my neighborhood, my, my one zip code. Okay, I know how to talk to them. Hi, I'm Andrew. I'm I'm a parent just like you, and this is what I'm looking for, helping kids like my son with music. What we do is this, and why we do it is this, and we do it better because of this, and this is how much it costs. Book the lesson. Here's the price. Boom, right? So it gets to be from audience to offer to message. And when you have like, I've had many teachers say, well, I say, who's your audience? Who's your primary audience? And they're like, well, I have like one guy, he's 80 years old, he wants to just play classical music. And I got 3 teenagers trying to learn enough to get into college. I have 5 kids who are like 2 years old and they're just doing Mommy and Me. I'm like, wow, that's like 3 different audiences, whatever. You really have to pick one and, and, and actually really just talk about that one, right? And then you can be clear that when people get to your website or they're— people know they're talking about you, it's like, oh, they're talking to me, exactly me. It's not like, do I fit in this category? If you focus on that singular audience, you will generally find more of their friends who are just like them, right?

Yeah. And I want to point out that you have been incredibly successful with this strategy because Park Slope Lessons has how many students now?

Uh, we're around 110.

And, um, how many teachers?

Uh, I'm just hiring, uh, a 15th now. Yeah, not everybody has a full caseload because not everybody wants a lot of students. They have other gigs somewhere else. But, um, yeah, it's, it's been very— it's been— I'm, I feel humbled and blessed and grateful. I know that there's, you know, a lot of these kids I've worked with them for 9, 10, 15 years, and I'm like family to them. They're like family to me. So, and, and then supporting my teachers is, is super important. I spent this whole last week preparing for our recital coming up, and we have 76 kids signed up.

I'm like, oh my God, it's a long recital.

We're gonna have two different concerts.

Yeah.

And they're all gonna be pre-recorded so we can maybe trim some of the dead air time, right?

Ah, good idea. Um, Andrew, we're running out of time, but I wanted to ask you quickly, you know, and this year we have to ask everybody, how has COVID affected you? And I mean, obviously it's difficult for everyone. People are dealing with it in different ways. How's it been?

Yeah, well, I, I feel extremely grateful and fortunate and blessed to not have had anybody I know get seriously sick or die from it. My lessons business, as soon as the city announced that we were going to have shutdowns, I had a mandatory training for all my teachers on Zoom because I've been using Zoom for years for Musicolor coaching. So I did a full-on training on that and by the next week all of our lessons were switched to virtual. We did lose maybe in the first month, we went down about 30%, and then we jumped back up to maybe like 15% lower. And now I looked at the end of the year, we're really just down 5% overall.

Wow. Wow.

That's great.

I'm very lucky and feel very fortunate, but also I think we were prepared for this because my school is a virtual school in that I send teachers to students' homes and they have a very strong bond with these people. These teachers and students are very bonded, so moving to a virtual thing feels like, oh, okay, I see you, I know you, right?

Yeah.

So it's a little easier than— I know there's some of those big schools that are once a week in a giant room and with a group class, it's a little harder.

Yeah, certainly group classes for sure. If you had one piece of advice for music teachers, piano teachers, what would your most important piece of advice be for them? Besides buy your method, of course.

And the weird shirt.

I would say, um, listen to all kinds of music. I can't stress that enough. There's so many music teachers who are so, um, fundamentalist almost and purist. It's like, nothing but Bach for me. We only do, you know, 17th century piano concertos, whatever. Uh, You know, I'm— I listen to all kinds of music, and I, I love teaching everything from the Guinea Pig Olympics, you know, Metallica to Van Halen. You know, when Van Halen died, I was showing some of my students some, some, uh, cool riffs. And then, um, you know, Beethoven, Bach, of course, and all the masters. Listen to all kinds of music and be not afraid to teach it. But I would say that using the timeline of, of musical history to know when to teach something is also a useful idea. Like, young kids need to have consonant-sounding things, um, from the classical and Baroque period, you know. If you jump too far ahead and you're doing Debussy and all these heavy colored 13ths and 11ths, uh, it just doesn't make sense. And the same thing from blues to rock to jazz, you know, that kind of thing.

Yeah, well, I think that's great advice. Um, I mean, certainly we never know what kind of music we're going to be called on to teach in order to be able to connect with the student.

True.

I completely agree with you. Even if it's the Guinea Pig Olympics.

We have to check it out. Maybe do a concert on that.

Where can we obtain information and inquiry of your method?

So if we go to my website, it's a new website. It's www.musiccolormethod.com. And that's with one C in there. So music— and it's M-U-S-I-C-O-L-O-R method, no space, dot com. And I'm going to actually create a coupon code for your audience.

Oh, wow.

PianoPod21.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Whoever buys our new basic training, which is going to be much more affordable than in the past will get a special bonus training from me.

All right, I might be the first one to sign up.

Thank you so much.

All right, so now the fun segment is here. This is the new segment, it's called The Piano Pod Rapid Fire Questions. So we will ask fun questions to you and you just need to give us a short answer for each question. So make sure it's, it's a short answer, okay?

Okay, I'm more nervous about this.

Don't screw up, it's really important.

Yeah, exactly, the music in the background.

Yeah, no wrong answers.

All right, are we ready?

Yes.

All right, what, what is your favorite food?

Uh, depends on the day of the week. Thai, Chinese, Korean.

All right, great. Uh, cats or dogs?

Cats.

Yes, all right, obviously. All right, next one. What is your word to live by, or words?

Brilliance.

Oh, good one.

Oh, good one. All right, what is the most important quality you look for in people?

Uh, passion.

Oh, great. What is the worst quality in people you want to stay away from?

Uh, ignorance.

So which historic figure or composer do you want to learn or take lessons from if he or she were alive?

Bach.

Bach, woohoo!

Okay, next one.

Yep. Which historic figure or composer do you wish to hang out at the bar if he or she were alive?

Well, I don't I don't know, uh, might be, uh, someone more like John Coltrane.

Cool.

All right, name one piece in your current playlist.

One piece? Oh my God, um, let's see, I can't even remember the names of these songs, but, um, all right, I'll give you one that comes up all the time, Soy Joe.

Okay, um, what's a book you're currently reading?

Uh, The Promised Land. A Promised Land by Barack Obama.

Oh, oh yes.

And what's your desert island piece that you only get to listen to for the rest of your life?

Oh my God, wow, hard questions. One piece for the rest of my life? Uh-huh. Oh boy, it might be La Mer by Debussy.

Oh, nice, nice.

All right, I think we're gonna end it there. We've tortured you enough.

Those are hard.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, that's the whole fun of it. All right guys, well, I think that concludes this episode of The Piano Pod. Thank you so much, Andrew and Kevet, for joining our program today. And thank you as always to the audience for tuning in to us. We want to remind you guys that the Musicolor method is available on Andrew's website, which is musicolor.com. The link will be in the description.

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All right, hope to see you for the next episode of The Piano Pod.

Bye everyone, thank you. Bye. Thank you, Andrew.