Patrick Boylan

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome everyone, back to the Tron podcast. This is your host, Rashad Woods. Today I have a very special guest who's joined me all the way from Los Angeles, California via Chicago, Mr. Patrick Boylan, multi talented musician, actor and voice recording artist. Thank you, sir. [00:00:35] Speaker B: Thank you for having me. How you doing? [00:00:37] Speaker A: I'm doing great, man. I'm doing great. Got a chance to talk to you a couple times over messages and I'm really excited that we got a chance to link up. So let everybody talk about what you do. Came from Illinois State, Midwest guy. Got all the way out to California. [00:00:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Got all the way out to la. Did the acting thing for a solid six years. I was super down. You know, the highs and lows of doing that were it was rough and there's too much space, too much space in between each project. So my self confidence just kept wavering up and down. It was not being creatively fulfilled. And so my wife was like, why don't you go play piano? You've been doing it your entire life. And so I ended up doing that. And three months after that, I started making my living off of it, which is amazing. And so one day I was bored. I was just tinkering about maybe doing some chores and I was like, well, I didn't go through the traditional ways of learning how to play piano. I kind of taught myself how to play piano. And here I am, a professional pianist. Maybe there's a way to teach people the way that I taught myself how to play piano. [00:01:44] Speaker A: Right. [00:01:45] Speaker B: And so that turned out to be this app that I'm making with some friends and it's out there in the world and people are using it and loving it, which is just so humbling and so cool. [00:01:53] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And so, you know it's called MuseFlow, right. And what the crazy part about it is that I hooked it up to my own computer. And this is like the guy with stone hands when it comes to like musical instruments. Right, right. You know, like. And so, you know, that wasn't bestowed upon me. My mother tried to put me in lessons I wish I had learned, you know, at this stage in life. But it was so cool because it gave you the instructions and it's telling you where your progression is. You hook it up to the mdi. Midi. [00:02:20] Speaker B: Yeah, midi. Yeah, midi. [00:02:22] Speaker A: Yes. And you just get a chance to go through the progression. And I felt like I was making progress and I can't play an instrument to save my life. [00:02:29] Speaker B: I love to hear that. Oh, that's such great feedback. Thank you. Yeah, we. I mean, level zero is just a. It's an interactive tutorial. Nobody's teaching this way. And it's a video, but we've overlaid this game component on it called Phaser, and that allows you to interact with the video. We've got a game designer that's. That's working with us. He's amazing. And so he's doing all of these interactive tutorials. And we start you from base level one. We start you from. Here's a piano. It can be multiple sizes. Play the middle note. It's called middle C. Play that note. And you play it and it hears you. And then you play it. Boom. It shows up green on the screen and it says, great job. There you go. And we move on from there. So I'm so happy to hear that it worked out for you. [00:03:16] Speaker A: Yeah, it really. It's like the C spot run. Right. And I always use the analogy of like martial artists. You know, myself, I did martial arts. Done multiple different styles. The best way to teach somebody is to first actually move their feet. Like, can you move? You know, first let's stretch you out. Okay. If you can pivot, you know, don't even get anything deep. Right. Find out what, you know, what their cardio level is and make them feel comfortable moving their body or in ways that they have not done before right now. And that's what I liked about Muse Flow. Okay, here you are at the kindergarten level. Let's make sure you master like what a key actually is. [00:03:55] Speaker B: Right, right. What a musical note and what it feels like to push down that key. [00:03:59] Speaker A: Yes, yes. Yeah. And it's, it's a power too, because, you know, I looked at your background and what's so amazing is, you know, you're a multi talented actor and you have your hands in so many different things, entertainment wise, but you're part of something bigger than what you're just doing in front of you, which is amazing. Right? [00:04:18] Speaker B: Yeah, that was. That's a very interesting sort of plate. I think being in the arts is equally selfish and self centered, but it's also serving the greater good. I mean, you're entertaining people. You're telling stories that can change the world, but you're also doing it. Other stories are just, you know, sit in the theater and leave your life for a second and forget about all your troubles. So it is sort of this interesting sort of dual purpose. In a way, it serves me as a person creatively fulfilling my needs and my interests, but it also is entertaining other people when it comes to Working in the music ed tech space, I do feel much more selfless in that regard. Yes, it's the way that I taught myself how to play piano. And we'll get into the details about how that actually works. [00:05:08] Speaker A: Yeah, that's something that we're. [00:05:10] Speaker B: It's. Yes, it's self serving in that regard, but it's not though, because I'm just porting it over into an app and sending that out into the world. [00:05:18] Speaker A: Right. [00:05:19] Speaker B: And yeah, I find it to be a very selfless and this very holistic sort of feel, especially when we're doing it the way that we're doing it. You know, we're building it with friends. I'm friends with everybody that's on our team. We've been friends for a while. And it's, it's a really cool feeling when you can work with your friends and build something cool. [00:05:40] Speaker A: I think the most interesting part too is like your path of how you do things. You mean, you're playing piano at restaurants, like there's tramp stamp grannies. And you're doing your voiceover work as well too. So you have your hands and your toes in multiple different things. How do you balance all that? [00:05:59] Speaker B: I don't think I'll ever stop acting. I don't think I'll ever stop playing piano. It's my biggest love, it's my biggest passion. And if I wasn't doing it as a job, I would just be doing it as a hobby anyway. So it's probably the same thing with you, right? Like, if martial arts is always going to be a part of your life no matter what, right? [00:06:20] Speaker A: Questionably, yeah. [00:06:21] Speaker B: Right. Unquestionably. Like, that's your art, that's your art, that's your creativity. [00:06:26] Speaker A: Right. [00:06:27] Speaker B: And so, yeah, I don't think I'll ever stop doing that. My day job for sure is. It's muse flow. And I do that eight hours a day and I'm present and I'm there and I'm enjoying it. But then I get to go out at night and I get to entertain people. Like, it's a wonderful balance in my opinion. Like you say, how to juggle everything. I'm like, well, it's a balance for me. I would be doing it anyway. So whether that's during the day or during the night, it just doesn't matter since, you know. [00:06:53] Speaker A: So how has it been received? Because we talk all the time, you know, conventional ways of learning. You know, you either the person, the woman or the man was teaching out of their living room, you know, or you went to. Or you had school and you had music. And then unless you went to lessons in the traditional manner, it was kind of stopped in the Internet. And digitization has really kind of democratized it and brought it to people's homes and their phones and things like that. So you said it didn't work for you, learning the traditional way. And so this is the way that you have, along with the people you work with, changing it for the better for people. How has it been received? [00:07:27] Speaker B: Well said. Democratizing music education, that's absolutely the goal here. You know, we want to lower the barrier to entry, to getting people to learn how to play in an engaging and fun way. [00:07:39] Speaker A: Right. [00:07:40] Speaker B: And it's turning out to be exactly that, which is kind of wild to me. But there are multiple. There are different ways of using it that we have not. We didn't recognize were going to be used in that way. We didn't thought anything that MuseFlow would be used in that way. For example. Yeah, you can like, use it with your teacher. We have three teachers that are using MuseFlow right now with their students. They're using it as a sight reading trainer. The act of reading music at first sight, that's kind of the engine of the curriculum. That's how we use. That's what we use to teach you the new skills, whether that's a new note or a new rhythm or whatever. [00:08:15] Speaker A: Okay. [00:08:17] Speaker B: We teach you through sight reading. And so people. Teachers are using it with their students, and they're saying, go home and practice levels one through three and then come back into lesson and we'll practice all the repertoire. We'll practice all the songs that get unlocked after each one of those levels. Cool. So they do it that way, you know, or they just use it as an external sight reading trainer. [00:08:43] Speaker A: Okay. [00:08:44] Speaker B: So there's that. So the teachers are using it in two different ways right there. [00:08:47] Speaker A: Right. [00:08:48] Speaker B: The self learners are using it in a multitude of ways. One, some people are just really excited to follow our curriculum, but we soft unlock everything. We don't hard unlock everything. So it is this balance between open world and curriculum and gamified learning. [00:09:08] Speaker A: Right. [00:09:08] Speaker B: You know, if you've played Breath of the Wild, Zelda, if you've ever played that, it's very similar to that. It's. It's this like open world concept. You can do whatever you want in it. You could play level 26, you could play level four. Whatever you want to do. Right. It's up to you. And you could play all of the songs that we've Got in the curriculum so far. Whatever you want to do. Right. Or you could follow our curriculum. [00:09:28] Speaker A: And that would be better for me. [00:09:30] Speaker B: Yeah, there you go. Right, right. [00:09:32] Speaker A: That would be better for me. [00:09:33] Speaker B: So there you go. Right. But some people. And then we've got other people that are. They have a really hard work. They have a really hard job, really difficult day at work. They come home. And the way that they transition from their hard job into being with their family and being present is they put on muse flow. Muse flow does this cool thing where it kind of forces you into this flow state where you have to be engaged with material at hand. No pun intended. Actually, all pun intended. The material at hand, your fingers are the ones that are doing the thing. Right. [00:10:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:10:10] Speaker B: So you. You have to be. You're, like, locked in, and you're engaged. And wherever you place yourself in the curriculum, it should be just a little bit outside of your skill level. So you're being challenged just a little bit. It's. We call it the goldilocks zone of challeng. Challenge. [00:10:24] Speaker A: Okay. [00:10:25] Speaker B: Challenge meets your skill level just a little bit outside of it. Right. And so you're. You're doing that because we all need a challenge. Right. And so you're forced into that flow state. This music that never repeats, that constantly is just going. And. And you have to play it. You have to. And it's constantly being generated. It's. It's infinite, and it will never repeat, and it's stuff you've never seen before, and you just got to keep going. And you have to get four phrases in a row at 95% accuracy to pass that level. [00:10:57] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah. [00:10:57] Speaker B: And. And there you go. And so some people use this as a way to kind of lock themselves into the present, ground them in reality. It lowers their heart rate. It's a meditation in a way. [00:11:09] Speaker A: Right. [00:11:10] Speaker B: To bridge the gap between a very difficult workday and being present with their family. And I'm like, that. We have three. We have, like, four or five. No, no, I wouldn't say four or five. I think it's between, like, two to four people. [00:11:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:21] Speaker B: That use it because of that. Specifically. Because it's a forced flow state and makes them present. And I'm like, that's so crazy. I never would have expected that. [00:11:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:30] Speaker B: But it's so awesome to see people using a product that you've made in a way that you never intended. [00:11:37] Speaker A: Well, you know, the thing for me is one of the reasons why I didn't gravitate towards doing music lessons was because you know, you're sitting there and it. And I'm not saying, like, there's obviously successful kids that learn how to play it. I wasn't passionate about it. But then when you're sitting in that living room and you're pressing the button, and then you're just like, this is not hitting on any level, emotionally, of what I want to do. Right. And there's some regrets with that, because now, you know. And I'm not saying there's not value in that, because those people do do great things. And it's a. It's a. It's a lane for some people, but, like, getting somebody in the comfort and the rhythm of what they're doing. Right. Like, I listen to a lot of music, right. Like, and I'm talking like, I'll listen to Daft Punk. I'll listen to hip hop, I'll listen to grunge. Like, I'm literally. I'm a sponge when it comes to music. And it's like, I would. That app is for the guy like me, where I wouldn't feel embarrassed that I wasn't progressing the way that I should, because then it challenges me to, in my own setting of where my progress needs to be. [00:12:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Some people love that wrote memorization of songs, because that's all they really want to do. They want to learn a song and learn another song and learn another song. Hey, if that works for you, great. That's what traditional lessons usually are. Your teacher gives you a new skill, whether that's a new note or new rhythm. [00:12:58] Speaker A: Right. [00:12:58] Speaker B: And then they give you a song or two to go home and practice that every week. And either you play it perfectly the next week for them. [00:13:06] Speaker A: Correct. [00:13:07] Speaker B: Or you have to go and repeat those same songs over and over and over until you get it perfect. [00:13:13] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:13:14] Speaker B: So some people appreciate that pressure. Some people appreciate that outside, you know, somebody looking out, looking over their shoulder and saying, no, you did that wrong. Some people like that. But it didn't work for me. I felt like I was learning the skills in isolation. I was learning the skills that I needed to know how to play piano in just those specific songs. It didn't feel cumulative for me. And then I was only experiencing those new notes, and I was only learning those new notes in the context of one learning new note, Just that one song. Right, Right. So you're like, it's. It didn't work for me. And so after. After my teacher retired, no fault of my own. I was a terrible student. I was terrible. But he just retired, and I got I got corroboration from other students of his that he did, in fact, retire. He didn't just tell me that he was retiring because he couldn't tell me that. [00:14:07] Speaker A: He was like, I got no more Patrick. So, like, you know, doors, doors locked. [00:14:10] Speaker B: I'm retiring. I. I don't want to teach you. I don't want to teach anybody anymore. No, no, no. It wasn't like that. It was literally retired. So after he was done, I was burnt out. It was eight years. I was done with it. I was like, 13 or 14. And I then went back to my parents. Sheet music. After a couple of months, my parents had all these musical theater scores. [00:14:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:14:36] Speaker B: So I went back and I started flipping through all of their music, just finding little tidbits that I really loved, like little phrases, little motifs that really felt good in my hands or whatever, or I really loved the melody. And so I learned that little bit, closed the sheet music, and then I started improvising around that little bit, putting that in different musical contexts. And by doing that method, I really enjoyed it because I was playing a lot of different music, because through my improvisations, I was just going, you know. And so that turned out to be the engine of my curriculum. I was doing this over and over and over for years. Cut to college. I was the only acting major that knew how to play piano. [00:15:24] Speaker A: That is so huge. [00:15:25] Speaker B: All of these musical theater people were throwing music in front of me, being like, hey, I want to practice this song. I want to practice this song. [00:15:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:31] Speaker B: And. And I was like, okay, cool, let's try it. And so I look at the music and I start playing it. And lo and behold, I could play it. [00:15:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:40] Speaker B: Not perfectly, but I could definitely get through it at first sight. [00:15:44] Speaker A: Okay, and just to be clear, that's not the only instrument that you play, right? [00:15:47] Speaker B: Oh, no, no, no. I. I. Back in high school, I learned clarinet, tuba, sing to sing. And in college, I learned guitar, mandolin, upright bass. [00:16:00] Speaker A: Unbelievable. [00:16:01] Speaker B: The cajon, which is like a little drum thing, Right. And like, maybe three or four other ones. I don't remember, but yeah, I've got my little music studio here. I got the. Got the keyboard. I got the. Got the guitar and the mandolin over here. [00:16:14] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. My. My oldest. My. My middle daughter. I have three daughters. My middle one is playing the flute, right? Not the flute. I want to get it clear. [00:16:20] Speaker B: Piccolo. [00:16:23] Speaker A: Let me pause on what it is. It's. It's an instrument you blow into. And I. I don't want to disrespect the name of it, I think. Yeah, it's similar to that. Yeah. And so, yeah, it's either the flute or the clarinet, One of those two. That shows you how good at music that I am. And. And my oldest one plays the violin. Right. And so they're going through the school traditional route, and I'm just like, I wish I could play with you. Like, there's such a burning. Like. Right. So, like a connection. It's a recorder. That's what it is. [00:16:51] Speaker B: Okay. [00:16:52] Speaker A: It's a recorder. But there's that gap right there where they're playing. I can hear it. And you just do this head, and, you know, I'm burying my hands in my head, and I'm like, I, I, I. I can't do that with you. Right. And I missed that. And so I think Muse Flow is going to bridge that gap for me to be able to have that calmness and that playtime with my kids. Because it is a family thing. It is a collaborative thing. To sit in the basement or the living room and be playing with your friends or your family, you know, your loved ones, and just having that connection with one another. [00:17:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a very communal sort of thing. We sat around a fire thousands and thousands of years blowing across a little divot in a wooden cylinder, and that created a whistle. We did that with drums, and we paired all of that together and created a dance. [00:17:42] Speaker A: It's. [00:17:43] Speaker B: It's so organic and human to us. We've been doing it for hundreds, like, tens of thousands of years. [00:17:49] Speaker A: You're like, right, that's how stories got told. [00:17:51] Speaker B: That's how stories got told. Absolutely. [00:17:53] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's music. [00:17:55] Speaker B: Music is so deep a part of our communal connections to each other that I think. I think you. You should absolutely try to make that happen for yourself if you want to. [00:18:05] Speaker A: If I do. [00:18:06] Speaker B: Only if you want to. [00:18:07] Speaker A: I do. [00:18:08] Speaker B: I'm so sorry that you feel like you're. You're missing out on that. [00:18:11] Speaker A: It's just a huge gap because, you know, you hear it playing and you're just like, okay, this is what you love. I need to be able to go down there and do that with you. Because then that could turn a crappy day into a day of joy. Maybe they're not watching tv. Maybe they're not doing nothing. Right. They're still being productive. And I say this to anybody who does any art. Martial arts is an art. The best part about what you do is that somewhere in the sphere of voiceover work and music, Patrick Boylan's name is there Right. I, you know, here I am, I'm. I'm a nobody in martial arts. Right. But somewhere in that connection of history, I'm a footnote, but I can still say I did that. Right. I can walk into a martial arts respective place, even if it's a different style. And like, I know what this is. Exactly what this is. And I'm sure you get that feeling with music, whether it's California movie set, you know, anywhere you go. [00:19:09] Speaker B: Yeah. You feel like you're a part of something bigger. [00:19:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:12] Speaker B: And. And you know, you know, I used to do CrossFit and it was very similar. Like I could walk into a CrossFit gym wherever I was, and I could, I knew exactly what they were doing. [00:19:21] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:19:22] Speaker B: I could, I could drop into a class and similar with the martial arts. You know, it's just, I find it fascinating, the connection between music and martial arts. We talked a little bit about this, didn't we? [00:19:32] Speaker A: Yes. [00:19:33] Speaker B: How both are kinesthetic and physical activities that we have to learn the rudiments of before we apply them to sparring or. [00:19:45] Speaker A: Without question. Without question. [00:19:46] Speaker B: There's so many similarities to this. [00:19:49] Speaker A: And then I'll say that, you know, to what you said earlier, you can't just learn the moves in isolation. [00:19:54] Speaker B: Right. [00:19:55] Speaker A: So like, okay, punch, block, punch, block, kick, block. You know, if you don't tie all of those things together similar to music. Right. Okay. It's okay. If you can perform in a vacuum, can you go down the dojo or the dojian floor and perform that move? Now you need to tie them together. And so whether your skill set is high, mid, or low, can you. Can you put them in a system that they flow together similar to music? Right. That's okay. If you could play this note in a vacuum or this song. Adaptability. [00:20:28] Speaker B: Adaptability, Right. [00:20:29] Speaker A: And I'll say this just a little deeper. I don't want to talk more than you. You know, and I know from being a martial arts, when somebody has conviction in what they're doing versus just performing the move that they've memorized. [00:20:42] Speaker B: So true. It's the same thing with music. [00:20:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:44] Speaker B: It's the exact same thing. You know, both of those things. Number one, playing in isolation, you're not going to learn. It's not going to be, you know, it's not going to grow. It's not going to be compounding on one another the things that you learn. And so the theory with Muse Flow is that you have to learn it outside of the context of songs and then go apply it to Songs. [00:21:06] Speaker A: Right. [00:21:06] Speaker B: And we're doing that in an engaging and fun way. Cool. Just like you're doing with martial arts. Just like people do with martial arts. Right. You learn the skills that are necessary to spar before you get into a sparring ring. And then. And then you fl. And then you get into that rhythm of, like, let's work with each other and manipulate and continue that far. [00:21:25] Speaker A: Yeah. It is beautiful, too, because it's a dance. You. Right. And you can see it in real time when it's happening. Right. Just like I've seen videos of people playing music. And you can see when the person gives that look to the other person and they know. Exactly. Even if they've never met or jammed before. [00:21:42] Speaker B: It's a language. It's a common language. [00:21:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's amazing. I've sparred with people I never, you know, didn't have a relationship before. But you knew where their head was when you did it. [00:21:52] Speaker B: So cool, isn't it? So cool. [00:21:54] Speaker A: It's the craziest thing in the world. And you're just like. Like, they know not to hit hard. They know how to move their head. And you're like, oh, this guy or woman. I'm not going to. There's. There's some very talented women. And you're like, this is fun. This. This is what I need. You know what I'm saying? [00:22:08] Speaker B: It's a. It's a dialogue. It's a. It's a communication. It's. Yeah, it's like. It's. It's. You're having a conversation 100%. It's so cool. It's the same thing with music and the other thing that you said, how people can. How people can perform without any sort of emotion behind it. They can do it very technically, proficiently, and they can execute that skill well or they can execute that song very, very well technically. But there's no feeling behind it. There's no. You know, I'm so curious if you get that in martial arts because it is such a very technical thing. Are there people in martial arts that are very, very good technically, but. But they're all. But they're not really good at the, like, emotional side of it all. Is there emotion in martial arts? That's kind of my main question, basically. [00:23:01] Speaker A: You know, whether it's boxing. Mine's is more. Mine's a More karate sense, so you can tell when somebody doesn't adapt well or is very. Like, my feet need to be in this position to perform this move, or my arms need to be in this position, of this move. But they don't have what you would. I twitch. They don't know when to twitch. Or if they're thrown off from unconventional sparring. You know, for lack of a better term, when hell breaks loose. Right. What can you really do? Like, if you're a martial artist and you. And something bad happens outside of your trained area, if it's in, if it's at a bar, if it's. Get a conflict, all bets are off. When it came to your training, do you. Do you have any sort of intuition to. I gotta end this quick so I can get to a safe space. [00:23:47] Speaker B: Yeah, right. [00:23:48] Speaker A: And 95% of what I learned ain't gonna apply to this situation right now. You know, so when it comes to your music, I'm sure you've seen a lot of people audition where you're like, yo, this person is phenomenal. But I don't see the conviction or I don't see the person passionately playing this particular instrument while they're doing it. [00:24:06] Speaker B: Yeah. So my. My wife's grandmother, she was a church organist for years, but she was kind of known for being able to play anything. She never played it, though, with conviction. She never played it with the heart behind it. [00:24:22] Speaker A: Right. [00:24:23] Speaker B: She was technically incredibly proficient, but she never played it with heart. Now, what? I'm not technically proficient. I'm kind of the opposite. I'm. I'm good at what I do enough to where people pay me for it, but for sure, I'm not technically proficient to where I'm the most. I can't play all genres. I can't play anything. Okay. I can't play a lot of classical pieces, actually. I can play a lot of jazz, but I can't play a lot of classical. And so. But I have so much heart behind what I play that in a way, it doesn't even matter, because I'm still telling the story of that song no matter what. Even if I'm not playing every single note correctly, it doesn't matter. I'm still having that connection with the audience. I'm still telling the story of that song. And so that's the emotion that is so necessary, the musicianship is what it is, what we call it, for sure, to be able to tell that story outside of being technically proficient. So what we're doing with Muse Flow is that we're trying to get you to a place where you are technically proficient enough to where you can start making those decisions on those songs. How do I want to play that song? Where do I want to. Where do I want this to go? If the song is called, I don't know, jumping like a Frog, and you're. And it's very. [00:25:45] Speaker A: Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. [00:25:47] Speaker B: Right, right. Why do you think that that composer wrote it very, what is called staccato. Boop, boop, boop. There's space in between those notes. Why do you think that? Probably. Let me just pause it here. That, like the title of the song and what the composer wanted to share was the sound of what it looked like for a frog to hop from rock to rock. [00:26:12] Speaker A: Got it. Oh. Oh, wow. [00:26:14] Speaker B: You know? [00:26:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:15] Speaker B: So he created space in between those notes. [00:26:19] Speaker A: Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. [00:26:21] Speaker B: Right. Sounds. It sounds like the action of a frog hopping. [00:26:26] Speaker A: Right. [00:26:27] Speaker B: Now, that's up to you. If you want to tell that story, you can do exactly like that. You can do it very staccato, or you could do it legato and come up with a reason why you decided to do that in contrast with the name of that song. [00:26:39] Speaker A: Okay. [00:26:39] Speaker B: You can. You can decide on how you want to play that song. As long as you justify it. [00:26:45] Speaker A: Right. [00:26:45] Speaker B: That is the. Those are the decisions that we want you to make. And unfortunately, with the traditional curriculum, you're just learning by rote. You're learning the songs outside of any sort of context. You're not really understanding the holistic elements of music and storytelling. Right. But with Muse flow, we're getting you to a place so you can be technically proficient, so you can start making those decisions by yourself. [00:27:08] Speaker A: Well, here's the fun part of what you said earlier, when you said whether that you can tell if there's the emotion behind it. Let's say you're playing at all these different venues, and you're doing really well with it. If I was to go in there, get a bite to eat, or go on a weekend, you know, I don't want to just see the piano guy going through the motions because he can play. You know, you want to see him interacting with the people at dinner, you know, having a smile on his face. Not like he's been condemned to push a rock up, though, you know? You know what I mean? [00:27:35] Speaker B: So true. [00:27:36] Speaker A: Right? And you're like, oh, yeah, geez. This is just, you know, you. I'm not really enjoying the mood or situation, you know, where this person's quote, unquote, going through the motions, so to speak. And so to your point, technically proficient doesn't make for an engaging experience, essentially. [00:27:51] Speaker B: Exactly. Right, Exactly. And it's the same thing. It's so cool that there's a parallel between martial arts and music in that regard. And I think there's something to be said about both our kinesthetic physical activities that you need to perfect. [00:28:07] Speaker A: Yeah, without question. It's like when you watch, like a movie, right? And you're like, yeah, the guy's technically proficient, but I don't see the fight scene engaging it all because he's just a martial artist. You know, they were like, you watch, like, even if you don't know who the guy is, Scott Atkins is a phenomenal martial artist and he's a phenomenal performer of martial arts at the same time. And you're just like, dude, this guy has just. He marries it all together perfectly. And so it's just beautiful to watch. I did have a question when it came to. Do you plan on expanding to other instruments outside of piano? [00:28:43] Speaker B: Yes. Later down the road, once we fill out the piano curriculum. We've also got a couple other things that we're building right now. In the. In the interim between building out the curriculum and what we've got right now, we've realized that there's some compatibility issues. Right now you can only use, you can MuseFlow on a laptop and a MIDI keyboard. So what you're. What we're doing right now is allowing. We're making the app so that you can download it on your tablet or your phone. [00:29:15] Speaker A: I have it too, by the way. [00:29:16] Speaker B: There you go. Fantastic. Or you can download it on your computer. We're also building the audio recognition algorithm so that instead of you having to use a MIDI keyboard and jack that into your whatever device you're using. No, we want it to be able to listen to you. And so we've built out a really great audio recognition algorithm. We need to port that over From Python into JavaScript right now and then get that, go, have that go live on the app. Test that out a little bit, and it should be really good to go. It's very, very clean. It's very, very good. It can work with monophony and polyphony, which is monophonic, meaning one note at a time, or polyphonic, meaning poly notes, multiple notes at a time. It does it all. It's really, really good. So we're working on that right now to inc that audio recognition algorithm into the app, and we're building the app for all these devices. We've realized that we need to work on that Universal accessibility. Universal compatibility is a big tenant for us. And so we want this Infinite stream of music at very specific levels. We want that on your phone so it can go. It can just scroll across the phone and you can play the game there. You know. Anyway, we're working on that. And then we'll get to padding out the piano curriculum and then we'll get to other instruments. We want to do all common instruments. [00:30:39] Speaker A: That's awesome. [00:30:40] Speaker B: Guitar, that's bass recorder, flute, clarinet. Like, we want to do all of them. Yeah. [00:30:47] Speaker A: And you know what the best part about this. And this is going to be my part of ignorance. But again, I always bring up martial arts because it's the one thing that I'm like that brings a parallel to this. [00:30:55] Speaker B: Please. [00:30:56] Speaker A: I have to imagine. And again, this is total ignorance of music. A piano is the same across the world that it is here. So you could be having some. I mean, I think the keys are the same, right? Like the musical notes are all. Is that accurate or is that ignorant of my. [00:31:09] Speaker B: That's accurate. It is a. There is interesting situations where there are. There are instruments that act like a piano. They are keys across, you know, horizontally on. And you play them with your fingers. [00:31:28] Speaker A: Okay. [00:31:28] Speaker B: And they hit strings with hammers. Okay, but. And so that's what the piano is. That is ultimately how the piano is created. Right? It's. You play the keys with your fingers and they. And the hammers that you play a key with, it hit a hit. Multiple, multiple strings. And so. [00:31:42] Speaker A: Right. [00:31:44] Speaker B: The pianoforte was created back in the, what, God, 1300s, 1400s, and maybe a little later than that. But there have been situations outside of Western culture where there are piano like instruments that. But there not in the same. Just tuning, which is what we call. Like we have a very specific type of tuning. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, all the way back to A. And then that repeats over and over and over as we continue to double and triple the harmonic sequence. That is. It's very technical, I'm telling you, in a very technical way. But that's the octave I'm just. [00:32:25] Speaker A: But I'm listening. [00:32:28] Speaker B: And then it repeats over and over and over. Those are the multiple octaves of the keyboard. Right. That's very Western culture. That's steeped in what the pianoforte was back in the day. And the harpsichord. Those were the original sort of pianos. And that was in just tuning. And yeah, outside of that, there are many different types of tunings. We're not going to tackle a lot of those in Muse Flow. We might later down the road. But those are like some Chinese tunings are like, we've got. There are what, 88 notes on a keyboard. Imagine splitting up each note into four notes. Each note. Do, do, do, do, do. Those are four notes for us. What if it was do do do, do do do. [00:33:19] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. [00:33:24] Speaker B: What if we split it up that much, right. Chinese, Chinese tuning or Vietnamese tuning or Indian tuning, they have so many different ways of splitting up a note. And so it's so much more detailed than us, but it allows for so much more nuance and the harmony, which is quite incredible. You get. Weirdly enough, a piano is actually a little bit out of tune so that it can work in every different key. Okay, okay. When you get. When you split it up into those microtones like that, you're able to work in such a way where you feel the harmony so much more profoundly. Yeah, it's really amazing when you hear somebody like when you hear. And acapella groups do this just automatically because they don't have a keyboard or they don't have an instrument to guide them. Humans are naturally born to follow harmony the way that physics intended it to be. Okay, okay. Because physics is just sound waves. That's all it is. I mean, sound waves is just physics. That's all it is. Right. And so humans are naturally drawn to proper harmony. True. Just true harmony. Whereas a piano is in what is called just tuning, and it's just harmony and it's not perfectly in tune. It's quite fascinating to me that humans will forget about Western tuning when they sing together without an instrument to guide them. Utterly fascinating. And so you look to other cultures for examples of that in all of their instruments because they split the note up into so many different ways. Long tangent here. [00:34:58] Speaker A: Point is listening, man. [00:35:00] Speaker B: Mushroom is not going to tackle those instruments just yet. We might later down the road, but right now we're kind of focused on Western notation and Western instruments. [00:35:09] Speaker A: Well, I was more, you know, kind of my question, just briefly was just like, okay, well, that's great, because then it applies to, you know, it expands. If somebody wants to learn lessons in. In, you know, in UK or in Spain or in, you know, somewhere else, and it, you know, depending on what they would like to learn, it could get. This could be. Have a lot of traction really fast because it has. To me, when I used it, it literally, it brought me to a comfort level that I was okay at sucking at this. [00:35:37] Speaker B: Great. [00:35:38] Speaker A: I love that I was okay with sucking at something. And I was like, I'm cool, I'm trash and I'm okay with that. [00:35:44] Speaker B: Right. [00:35:46] Speaker A: The male ego trash. [00:35:48] Speaker B: And I'm okay with that. [00:35:49] Speaker A: I was completely fine with it. I'm like, I happen to bring my ego down to the where, like, I know nothing. And this app is perfect for the guy that knows nothing but doesn't want to be embarrassed by the 7 year old. My kid's playing the violin. And it is the most that you want to get brought down to earth when your kid can do something you can't. Like, that'll do it right then and there. Knock your socks off, kid like, dad, daddy's gonna go watch tv. [00:36:14] Speaker B: Yeah. I love that, though, because that's number one. We're meeting you where you're at, right? And you're not having a teacher over your shoulder being like, no, you did it wrong. Right. We care so deeply about positive reinforcement, for sure. We think humans are trained to care so deeply about the negative. It's what's kept us alive for our entire time as a species. You know, we hear a rustle in the bush and we don't know what it is. We run away, of course. And it's the unknown and it's the fear that has really drived us to stay alive, driven us to stay alive. So we think that you don't need any sort of negative reinforcement. You. We don't. In fact, we need positive reinforcement to compensate for our natural predisposition for negative reinforcement. [00:37:05] Speaker A: And I'll just take it a step further. The reason why music's so beautiful, like, they play it in elevators, they play it in the store. They play it right. It, like, it lightens. You'll stop in an aisle and you're like, man, you know, damn it, you know, like, I'm shopping. And you're kind of stoic and focused on what you're doing. And all of a sudden, you'll hear, like, a really nice song that you enjoyed, and you're in the middle of Kroger or wherever you're at Costco. You're like, man, that's a nice song that's playing right now while I'm looking for milk and cheese and eggs and whatever, you know, bridges that it brings that positive energy to you. And yeah, knowing what you do in your field and the. The passion behind it, man, it's. It's. It's incredible. And I'm glad you're reaching the people that you're reaching. [00:37:44] Speaker B: Thanks, man. We're trying a lot. We're trying hard. It's hard doing. You're doing. [00:37:48] Speaker A: You're not trying to. You're not. You're doing it. [00:37:50] Speaker B: We're doing it. We're doing it. We're doing it as best as we can. And it's turning out that people are really liking it. I'd love to give your. Your audience a. A coupon code of that school. [00:38:01] Speaker A: Absolutely. It is. I really appreciate that too. [00:38:04] Speaker B: Yeah, of course. Let's call it Tron 50. [00:38:08] Speaker A: That sounds you. Thanks, man. Appreciate that. Appreciate it. [00:38:11] Speaker B: Of course. Yeah. So this will give every. Everybody who wants to try it a 50% off for life. Okay, nice. You know, we are relatively new. We're only about a year, year into this. We've got about 55 people that are using it and paying for it. It's just hitting a place where we're actually paying for our overhead. We've got some investment from people, which is really great. That's helping us build it, of course, but we're still not at the place where we're like, making our living off of this yet. So we want people to try this out. We want people to engage with this product. We've got the user feedback into feature building. We've got that flywheel really working here where people give us feedback into what they want and then we build it for them. We've really working on that. And so we'd love more of that feedback. We'd love for anybody to try it. And because of that, we'd love to give you a discount code. [00:39:03] Speaker A: And we. I very much appreciate that. Hey, listen, you know, this. This podcast is all about talking to interesting people who have accomplished things that took the road less traveled and carved out their own niches. You're clearly a guy from the Midwest that decided, this is the path I want to do with my life. And you're succeeding at it. And it's an honor to be able to spend the time with you for, you know, to carve out some time on this show with little old me to be able to talk about that. And that's what the randomness nothing is all about. To talk to people like Patrick Boylan and the skills they bring to the table and the joy they bring to people's lives. [00:39:33] Speaker B: Thanks, man. You know, it's a pleasure talking with you too. You are not nothing. You have built two incredible children and three. Three. Three incredible children. And what are. What are their ages? [00:39:44] Speaker A: 11, 9 and 5. [00:39:46] Speaker B: Wow, man. [00:39:47] Speaker A: All girls. All girls. [00:39:48] Speaker B: All girls. [00:39:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:39:50] Speaker B: Oh, my God. Just like my wife's family. They come from a lineage of the matriarch lineage. It's incredible. Like, every single person in their family is female. [00:40:00] Speaker A: That's crazy. [00:40:01] Speaker B: The males are the ones that are, like, marrying into the family. It's. [00:40:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:40:06] Speaker B: It's wild, like, but it's. It's amazing. Like, how is it. How is it raising three daughters? [00:40:12] Speaker A: It's, you know, it's. It's. It's. It's a challenge, and it's fun, you know? And the crazy part is when they start getting to the age where they can start actually, like, you're having a conversation with your kid, and not having a kid, like, talk with them is a really weird feeling because you're, like. You're talking to, like, a human being, not, like, somebody who needs, like, to get a toy off a shelf. Right. And you're like, I'm having a hard time comprehending that. We're, like, talking, right? Because we're not. You know what I mean? Like, we're talking. Right. It's the weirdest thing. Right? And then, you know, so surreal. I. You know, I dropped my oldest daughter off at school, and, you know, music really quick ties us together because, you know, I'll play Adele, Skyfall, and you can look. I look out the corner of my eyes, which is a great song, and you could see her singing the Skyfall song. Right. And you're like. That's how you get that. Yeah. I'm dropping you off at school, but then I know what music to play with you in the car to get you to come out of your shell, because it's just a ride to school. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So it's beautiful, man. And I just love how music can bridge that gap. [00:41:19] Speaker B: I can't wait. We're going to be having a kid in about. We're looking at three to five years, hopefully a little sooner. [00:41:24] Speaker A: Bless your heart. Good for you. And, you know, like I said, you know, and I'm sure that they'll be using musical instruments around the household that you'll be cultivating around. [00:41:35] Speaker B: No doubt. No doubt. [00:41:37] Speaker A: Exactly. That's the given. [00:41:40] Speaker B: Totally. [00:41:42] Speaker A: Patrick Boylan, thank you so much for your time, brother. [00:41:44] Speaker B: An utter pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. [00:41:47] Speaker A: Yeah, the honor is mine. Have a great one, brother. [00:41:49] Speaker B: You, too. [00:41:50] Speaker A: Bye.