1KHO 838: Curing the World of Note-Reading Illiteracy | Yigal Kaminski, Simply Piano

**Ginny Yurich** (0:00)
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Welcome to The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And we are going to be talking today about something that is near and dear to my heart. We are going to be talking about music and more specifically learning how to play music. I am a piano player and started learning at age four and it is a very, very special part of my life. But I know life can be busy for parents. It's hard to find teachers. It's hard to get to lessons. Or sometimes you just need a little bit of extra like motivation to get the practice in and not to quit. And it is an absolute honor to have Yigal Kaminka here. He is a co-founder of Simply. This is an app where you can learn all sorts of instruments. We're going to be focusing on piano today. But this is being used by millions worldwide. Yigal, welcome.

**Yigal Kaminski** (2:01)
Thank you. I'm really excited to be here and I'm a musician myself. And I'm really excited that you're playing piano since four.

**Ginny Yurich** (2:08)
Yes.
And I have a daughter who sings and so I'm able to accompany her. And those are the types of things that you can't ever predict. You know, you don't know down the road. And so she does different competitions and things. And I'm able to be the one that plays the piano underneath what she's singing. So it's been very good for us to build community, music, expand your world. So I would love if you would kick off with your story. So you play the oboe and also the recorder. And I watched one of your videos. I didn't realize that a recorder, you know, you often think of that as an elementary school. That's the first exposure to note reading. But you can play it extremely beautifully.

**Yigal Kaminski** (2:50)
Thank you. So first of all, when you mentioned playing with your daughter, that's already a magical moment that has been, you're talking about my story. That's been my dream of supplying such magical moments to everyone. Growing up, I played the oboe. I later became the principal oboist of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. I studied abroad. I played with tours and I played with some big names.
It's been always on my mind how is it that everyone is not playing? Everyone is not learning music. How come is it anybody? Everyone are not proficient in sheet music because it's such an easy, it's much an easier language than English or any other language than letters. Notes are much easier to comprehend. It's a visual language.
It's really easy to do if you just put your mind into it. And I just couldn't understand considering how much value and how much merits it brings to one's life.
And I've experienced it as an international language. I know it's a cliche, but playing tours with people from all over the world has really demonstrated how this is a real international language. And I wanted to bring this to everyone.

**Ginny Yurich** (4:26)
And the piano allows you that, and I would imagine you would say the same. My husband plays the drums, but he started off as a piano player. And he said that helped him to separate the limbs. You know, your hands are doing something different than your feet.