26 1 6 Ep 84 How Sightreading Sparks Creative Flow with David Holter

[00:00:00] VO Artist: Welcome to Your Creative Chord Podcast, where host Jenny Leigh Hodgins, author and educator, shares unique insights dedicated to empowering your creative flow and inspired living. Through solo reflections and dialogues with creators and wellness experts, Jenny Leigh shares holistic wisdom influenced by her Buddhist practice, alongside poetic insights and practical strategies for living authentically.This podcast helps you overcome challenges and unlock your full creative potential.

[00:00:43] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Welcome to Your Creative Chord podcast. I'm your host Jenny Leigh. Today's guest is pianist and educator David Holter with a master's degree in piano performance and pedagogy and certification in the injury Preventive lister Sync method. David helps pianists develop both. Technical confidence and creative freedom through his work@sitereadingspark.com, he specializes in helping students build flow, coordination, and trust in their feel of the keys.

[00:01:16] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: An approach that empowers more expressive, effortless, and injury-free playing. I'm excited to explore how David's unique lens on site reading supports not just stronger piano skills, but a more connected and creative relationship with music. So welcome to your Creative Chord podcast. David. 

[00:01:37] David Holter: Thank you so much, Jenny.

[00:01:38] David Holter: I'm thrilled to be a part of this. Thank you. 

[00:01:41] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: I'm so glad to have you here and to learn more about your approach to piano learning, and we met each other a little bit. We've, I know a little bit about your background because you participated in a piano event that I did and it was featured in the

[00:01:54] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: podcast episode, a panel of piano educators, and you were one of the wonderful contributors to that discussion. So if people are looking for that, you can find that in episode 75. So let's start with some background and some personal insight into your specific musical journey. I heard your story of wearing a barber's bib to block your view of the keyboard, and that is free, but it's also profound.

[00:02:19] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: And I'd like to know if you could summarize that. Story and how that experience shifted your understanding of sight reading and of your own music learning process. 

[00:02:30] David Holter: Sure. So, you know, sometimes we work really hard at something for a long time and we just feel a little stuck. You know, like we lose that enjoyment, we lose that flow that I know you talk about a lot, that creative, you know, like the reason that we want to work on the skill to begin with, right?

[00:02:46] David Holter: And so for me. I loved everything about piano growing up, except sight reading. Sight reading was my nemesis, you know, that was the one thing that I was like, I don't think I'll ever be good at this. I love to work things out by ear, memorize music, et cetera, and I just felt this block with sight reading. I even, I had a degree in music composition.

[00:03:05] David Holter: I still wasn't able to c sight read well until in grad school with Dr. Barbara Lister Sink at Salem College in North Carolina. She had all these Barbara's bibs just hanging up on her door, her studio door. And I thought, what, what is that for? You know, do you have a little haircut business on the side?

[00:03:25] David Holter: What? And she said, that's for my sight reading class. You should take it. And so I took her sight reading class 'cause I really needed it. But I thought we would just work on. How to get faster at working out rhythms and analyzing chords and all these things that I already knew how to do for my composition degree.

[00:03:41] David Holter: What she had me do was she put a very simple little minette up there on the rack and then she put the barber's biber on my neck and she draped it over the keys, and she made me try to read this piece without being able to see my hands or the keys and I could, I didn't. I was like completely stuck and frozen.

[00:04:00] David Holter: Didn't know what to do, but I had already studied really. Pretty advanced things with her, you know, like Chopin s and Beethoven Sonatas. And it was a little embarrassing, like, well, I can't even read this very simple Minette, as long as this barber's bib is in the way. And she said, exactly, that's, that's the skill you're missing.

[00:04:17] David Holter: Is it? It almost no one ever showed me that. It was like, well, this is odd because I understand everything on the page. I've composed a lot of music and I've played a lot of music, but I just don't have this simple, little simple in theory, but a little more complicated to develop this skill of being able to leap around on the piano keyboard while keeping our eyes on the sheet music.

[00:04:40] David Holter: And then a friend of mine got up there with the barber's bib, phenomenal site reader, and he was able to just knock it out without needing to look down at all. And so that's when this aha moment came in. It's like, oh. I simply haven't developed that ability, you know, that that skill of confidently leaping around and knowing where I'm by feel while keeping my eyes on the sheet music, and it really made a big difference for me.

[00:05:04] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Yeah, that's a great story. I was wondering if they were gonna eat lobster with those bibs 

[00:05:10] David Holter: up barbecue, Southern barbecue down here, North Carolina. 

[00:05:13] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Yeah, that makes more sense. Yeah, and, and so David, like you, I also have a degree in music composition and I can totally relate to that. You know that even with a degree in music and training, you still struggle with a particular skill, like sight reading.

[00:05:27] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Why do you think that disconnect happens for so many musicians, even trained musicians? 

[00:05:33] David Holter: Well, it goes back, at least it did for me, and I've talked with a lot of other, once I got into this, I started interviewing all my friends. You know, I made it kind of formal and I sent them a list of things that we went through and I recorded it and I started.

[00:05:48] David Holter: Just studying my friends who were at all sorts of different levels of site reading and I was looking for like, what is it that the really good site readers have done differently that the not good site readers haven't, because I have quite a few friends who will admit themselves that they have, they have the undergrad degree, they have the grad degree, you know, in, in music, but they're not able to sight read well at all.

[00:06:12] David Holter: And it really seems to go back for me and my friends. To the way that we have just always learned music. So for me, you know, I remember my first really sort of legit piece when I was a teenager, you know, it was like the, the moonlight sonata, you know, and so starting with the first movement, right, it's like.

[00:06:30] David Holter: I love this piece so much, but it's really hard 'cause it's got like four sharps and it's so long. You know, I think a lot of people have that kind of experience with Moonlight Sonata. They wanna play it. It doesn't sound that hard, but then you look at the sheet music and you're like, oh my gosh. So you start working it out one note at a time, and then you look at the first note, the G Sharpp or whatever, G Sharp in the right hand.

[00:06:52] David Holter: And then you look down at the keys and you play it, and then you look back at the music C, okay, you look back down at the Keys, you play it. So we get good at memorizing. We're able to play things off the score, and that works for us. You know, there's this idea that there are memorizers and there are readers, but what I wanted was to be able to do both.

[00:07:10] David Holter: And that's what I want for my students now. And so I think the difference is kind of just what works for us from the very beginning. We get into this sort of habit and we, we can't read well because. We've always learned music this way. If, if that makes sense. Yeah. 

[00:07:27] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: It's unlearning a habit and learning a new practice basically, right?

[00:07:32] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Yeah, exactly. Unlearning. 

[00:07:35] David Holter: Exactly. 

[00:07:36] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: I love that. And so. Love that explanation and yes, so many of us struggle with that. I love that your specialty is site reading. It's something that so many of us have that gap in our skill repertoire. I wanna switch a little bit to nurturing creative flow. You mentioned earlier that is an ongoing topic covered on your creative right podcast, and it kind of refers to being in the zone or being in touch with your creative voice or being able to express it or being able to create an output of ideas.

[00:08:03] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: How would you define. Creative flow on the context of site reading. What role does site reading play in opening up creativity for a piano learner? 

[00:08:13] David Holter: On the one hand, that question leads me to think about, there's such a connection between creative flow and physical flow. So what we need for site reading is to develop.

[00:08:29] David Holter: Our technique in such a way that we can move freely and confidently on the keys so that when we have a leap in the sheet music, for example, we don't freeze up in terror and just look down as a knee jerk reaction, but we actually look forward to that leap, like a big wave we're about to ride, and boom, that arm just moves to, it flows, everything flows more and more physically because there's nothing like sight reading to really tense people up physically.

[00:08:56] David Holter: I think there's a connection, you know, mind, body, like between feeling like your whole body's being shrink wrapped physically, and you're getting more and more tense and tight, and your head's jutting forward and your neck's getting tight and your shoulders are coming up. All that stuff that happens, especially when we sight read, if we haven't been trained and it's in this way.

[00:09:14] David Holter: And so the more we can stay physically free, you know, without getting muscularly tense, the more the music will flow as well. And a lot of my students have reported too, that we find that when we get into this physical flow and this music starts to flow out of nowhere, we suddenly get good ideas. It's one of those flow state activities.

[00:09:36] David Holter: You know, like people have different types, skiing or whatever these movement activities where you're really engaged in the moment. Site reading is one of those. It reminds me, I did a little bit of dirt biking in high school. I didn't get very good at it, but where you're just like, you're going up and down these hills over these tree bumps and stuff in the woods, and if your attention flags or you start thinking about something else, you'll crash into a tree.

[00:10:00] David Holter: It's that kind of thing in sight reading where we have to ride the terrain of the music and we have to learn how to do that very high skill actually without getting tense and tight. And when we access that. It's like we become one with the original musical intent from the composer in a way. It's really phenomenal and it's fun, you know, in a different sort of way than improvisation, for example.

[00:10:24] David Holter: It's like, okay, now you're just one with the composer right there. Just, you know, like reading a book. It's like you're just right there with the expression. And then the last thing I would say about like, what I think of as flow is the main challenge that most students have that I certainly had. We think the only way to practice sight reading is to just dive in and keep a steady beat and don't stop and just play it at full tempo.

[00:10:50] David Holter: And that's why we get so frustrated because we feel like we're awful at that. So what I have my students do in order to work up to the point where they can flow continually with the music, I have them intentionally practice, we call it blue mode, where. They can take as long as they need on every beat of music to feel for it with the fingertips without looking down.

[00:11:14] David Holter: So in blue mode practice, there's no steady beat requirement. There's no metronome. Police they have all the time. They need to feel for the right notes. And this means that they can go from beat to beat at just the right speed based on their skill level that allows them to access a kind of flow state where they have just the right level of challenge.

[00:11:35] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: I love how you're starting with attuning to the physical sensation and feed, right, because that's right. At a pace that they can manage. That is a very, from all the pianists and musicians I've known over the years in my own background, that is a very unique approach to site reading and well actually to piano learning itself, right from classical background or traditional background.

[00:11:58] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Most people don't focus first on. Physical sensation and feeling your way and getting familiar with the physical topography of the keyboard, like your focus is there and taking it at a pace. That's a big part of successful piano learning in general, but most people forget to do that until later when they have mistakes.

[00:12:17] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Right. I love how you built on the kinesthetic, the physical feel and the That's right. Relaxation of thing. I love that approach and yeah, that makes total sense that it would trigger creative flow because creative flow is about expressing comfortably and being open, and that's what you're doing physically.

[00:12:33] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: So you're kind of leading the way for that. That's wonderful. A wonderful approach. I wanna explore how sight reading. Can be both creative and integrative musical practice. So for example, what parallels do you see between cultivating your sight reading, fluency, and maybe nurturing other creative skills like musical analysis or composing or improvisation?

[00:12:59] David Holter: Yeah, so it's a great, you have great questions here. So when I was growing up, I actually. Thought I would be a professional ball player, baseball. And I also thought I might be a professional writer. Unfortunately, I didn't decide to be a professional pianist until after I gave up on baseball, but, but hey, you know, we all figure things out.

[00:13:22] David Holter: But the parallels were, yeah, that what inspired me to play baseball and to get better at it, was watching the professionals, watching how they move, watching how they. How they talk about the game. And what inspired me to wanna write was what I was reading in middle school, high school. We were reading all these great, incredible works of literature and it's like by reading, by basically spending time with the greats, you know, whether it's watching baseball on TV or reading dust iki, it's like, now I want to go and I wanna do this thing myself.

[00:13:59] David Holter: So there is, you know, sometimes people say, well, you know, the Beatles couldn't read music or, you know, this person couldn't read music, which is valid. They had great ears and they could, they could make things up, which is incredible. Having a good ear is very important as a musician, but to me the, it's not an either or if you want to develop your improvisational skills, if you want to develop your compositional skills.

[00:14:23] David Holter: It's really important to listen of course. Right. But I would say like a close second to that is it's so cool to be able to read what the composer originally penned. You know, it's one thing to listen to someone improvise like a cadenza in Mozart and then start improvising your own. That's, that's amazing.

[00:14:45] David Holter: But if, when you can actually just read what Mozart actually put down himself and there's not a big barrier there, you're able to. Really explore and get to know his original inspiration and creation from his own pen. That's it. It's, it's basically, it comes down to literacy. It's like being able to read a book before you go to write.

[00:15:05] David Holter: Um, but that's, that's certainly not to diminish. A lot of really amazing, especially pop musicians who haven't been able to read music. I just think there's no reason not to develop both the ear and the reading 

[00:15:19] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: multiple skills. And I love how you Oh yeah. I love how you started that answer with observing professional ball players and Yeah, reading the great literature masters and Right.

[00:15:32] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Then reading a Mozart score. All of this is. One of those research proven, you know, typical ways that CRE professional creatives typically get inspired or get inspiration from things is by studying and exploring the creativity of the masters. Exactly. Exactly. A great way to open up your own flow with that.

[00:15:52] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: I love that approach that you just. Describe with that. Totally. And um, going back to your, uh, I've, I've watched some of your videos, which are really amazing. You have some really great site reading masterclass type things available that I've seen. And in your teaching approach, you emphasize to develop a strong feel of the keys, which we touched on a little bit earlier about your approach to site reading and.

[00:16:15] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: You know, for myself, I taught piano for 30 years and gigged as a musician for a long time, and I've seen many piano students struggle with being detached from their physical connection to the piano. Instead, they get really deeply immersed, like we talked about visually and cognitively, which provokes tension, you know, often, and they miss the bigger.

[00:16:34] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Oral pic, you know, sound even of the bigger picture of the music. Yeah. And then they stuck in habitual mistake, repetition. It's like, and that's where most returning or new learners as adults get really frustrated with that. How do you feel that reconnecting with the tactile, the feel? Of the keys, the awareness of that helps the students open up more expressively or to do maybe more intuitive music making.

[00:16:59] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: How does that tactile awareness lead to better music making in your opinion? 

[00:17:05] David Holter: Yeah, great question. So just as a practical example, one of the things that I work on with students that seems to make a big difference. Because it first made a big difference for me. Like a lot of the stuff I teach and a lot of what I teach in terms of piano technique is straight from Dr.

[00:17:27] David Holter: Lister Sink. She has her, it's called the Lister Sync Method, and that's what actually brought me out of injury from playing the piano too tight, too tenths, too many hours a day, you know, back into playing more easily than ever before. But this way of approaching the piano, it's really the Lister Sync Method is about playing efficiently.

[00:17:45] David Holter: So. Using just the right muscles needed for the task, no more, no less for whatever passage you're working on, right? And the alignment of the bones and all this to optimize for that. And so one of the principles in the Lister Sync Method is as often as we can to release unnecessary tension. The extensor muscles, which are at the, if your palm is facing down, so the extensors extend the fingers, these muscles running all the way back.

[00:18:14] David Holter: If you can see on the video, I'm rubbing the top of my forearm here with my palm facing down. And so these are the extensor muscles along the top of the forearm that extend the fingers and they go all the way back to the elbow here. 'cause there are no muscles in the fingers. It's actually to extend the fingers or to lift the fingers like this.

[00:18:30] David Holter: We're using these, a lot of these muscles in here, in the forearm. I remember when I was playing really intensively as a teenager to the point of injury, my forearm just felt like my forearms just felt like they were gonna fall off. You know, like they were so tense. So one of the principles of the list sync method was she says, as often as possible, just let the fingers rest on the keys.

[00:18:53] David Holter: What that does is it allows the extensor muscles to be free. See, I'm just resting my fingers here on my palm. So. My fingers just resting on the keys. That little bit of technique lets me play more freely ultimately, if I can learn how to do that well, but it also helps me to feel the keys more so to provide the student with more expressivity, like more artistry, more confidence, all that stuff that we want.

[00:19:19] David Holter: It helps, let's say if you're looking at the sheet music and you see, okay, there's an A major arpeggio coming, like a C sharp ea. Really nice if you can let all five fingers rest and you're feeling all of those notes before you actually play through them, if that makes sense. 

[00:19:40] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Without tension, with relaxation.

[00:19:42] David Holter: Yeah, without right, without extra tension. Or a simpler example, you see that we're about to play C-D-E-F-G all in a row and you can see those notes all lined up there on the sheet. Music. If I can feel those notes with all five fingers, it's like. To take the biking example, if we're biking on a path in the woods, it's like I'm seeing the next 20 meters ahead of me and I know what's coming up.

[00:20:04] David Holter: Even though I'm going fast, I can see what's coming up. I'm confident. The problem with sight reading is it's really easy for people to just look one note at a time and also to hold up fingers like this while playing, which means you can't feel very much like you can't feel the path that's coming next.

[00:20:21] David Holter: In the next few notes, you can't feel it. So of course that just leads to more tension and frustration. And also if you're only looking one note at a time, it's like if you are biking, you're looking straight down, practically you're gonna crash. You know? So it's amazing what the simple little technique, principle, the difference that even just that can make.

[00:20:42] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Yeah. Relaxing. On the keyboard and finding groups of patterns that your whole five finger can accommodate. 

[00:20:49] David Holter: Exactly. 

[00:20:50] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Change it, you know, before you change to another. That's, it's a big shift for new learners or returning learners to switch from looking down at the ground on the bike or looking at one note at a time to, to grasping patterns like that.

[00:21:03] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: And you use that in your site reading approach. You help them find the bigger shapes and that basically initially. Love that. I love that approach. It's great tip for all our piano listeners right now. 

[00:21:13] David Holter: A metaphor that a lot of people can relate to is typing. So if you can touch type, meaning you can type without looking down at the keys, you're confident with that because you know, based on where your hands currently are and what you're currently feeling, right, that little bump on the F bump on the J, you know that you can very easily find any other key that you need From there, 

[00:21:32] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: landmark and 

[00:21:32] David Holter: scan, it's like as long as we.

[00:21:35] David Holter: Are aware with the 10 fingers, we're aware of where our hands are at any moment. 

[00:21:40] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Yeah. 

[00:21:40] David Holter: Then we can apply the same sort of principle of the home row to confidently playing, and then when we need to leap or move the hand. 

[00:21:47] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. You 

[00:21:48] David Holter: can translate that same kind of confidence from typing into.

[00:21:51] David Holter: Reading music this way. I 

[00:21:52] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: love that example. So I was just gonna ask, what does a typical musical practice session focused on flow and physical ease look like versus something focused on perfection or control and what you've just described here, feeling where you are, recognizing it as the sensation, being aware of that full pattern and relaxing your fingers into it before you're even playing it.

[00:22:12] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Right, opposed to OneNote at a time. Is that what you would do in a typical music practice session that focuses on the physical sensation versus control or perfection, you 

[00:22:23] David Holter: know? Right. So in sort of a typical session, you know, we'll do some technique with my students, which is really straight out of the list or sync method that I went through a certification program so I can teach this stuff method.

[00:22:38] David Holter: Yeah, and it, and it's really, you know, we have to break things down quite a bit. So we start with very simple movements at the beginning. Like just one example would be, you know, let's say we're working on quick leaps on the piano, which we wouldn't start with right away, but we would start with this principle of just letting the arms rest down by your side.

[00:22:59] David Holter: So I think, so for the video here, one exercise from the beginning would be something like sticking the elbows out like this, which is what a lot of us do when we need to. Play a big leap, but actually that's a lot of muscular effort. Yeah. For 

[00:23:12] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: the listeners that are not seeing it, his arms are up like Almost like chicken wings.

[00:23:16] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Like chicken wings, yeah. 

[00:23:19] David Holter: Right. And so if I just let that go, if I let the upper arms hang down by my sides, so the elbows are hanging down by my sides, you know, I'm not clenching or squeezing with the armpits, but I'm just letting my upper arms hang naturally like we would, if we're standing, then I can do this sort of movement.

[00:23:35] David Holter: So what I'm doing is I'm moving the forearms left to right in parallel to the floor very fast 

[00:23:41] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: without any elbow, chicken wings, by the way, 

[00:23:44] David Holter: right? Just letting the upper arms continue to hang. That's the kind of simple, basic technique that we would just get a feel for. Then we would apply that to a leap on the piano.

[00:23:54] David Holter: So for example, feeling your third finger, you know, on middle C or middle D, and then applying that principle of the arm movement. As we leap an octave, you know, two octaves first, first looking down at the keys always. So I don't want anyone to think that you should never look down anytime you're practicing technique and you're learning a new skill.

[00:24:17] David Holter: Like let's say you're learning to play a flat, major scale for the first time and you want it to flow freely, physically, not just get the right notes, but you want it to feel good physically and you wanna be able to go faster physically. Really good to do that first looking down because. There is a sort of connection with the piano, and when I play from memory, I'll look down.

[00:24:36] David Holter: Why not list look down? You know, it's, there's not a problem with that. It's like, yeah, looking down, we can see more what we're doing and how we're physically moving. Then once you get a feel for the skill, so like this octave leap or this two Octa leap or the scale, whatever it is, once you get a feel for being able to do that freely and in a flowy sort of way, not the most academic term, but.

[00:25:00] David Holter: Then we can apply that, you know? Now let's do it with the eyes closed is a good next step. Okay, now let's do it. Looking at that kind of pattern in sheet music. Does that make sense, that progression? Yeah, 

[00:25:11] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: totally does. And it brings me to not really sight reading related, but in memorization when I am practicing something from memory that I think I've got down, if I do that with my eyes closed or with the lights off.

[00:25:26] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: It's a whole new world. Like I don't, yeah, I don't have it down as well as I thought, you know? Totally. I like learning it that way, you know, practicing memorization even that way, just closing your eyes and getting that sense of the feel of it or having the lights off where you can't really see it that love that.

[00:25:41] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: It's kind of the similar approach to your sight reading, where you're getting comfortable with the physical sensation. Again, the tactile awareness, right? How, how in depth that. Impacts your musicality overall. I love that. Absolutely. And by the way, just for listeners and YouTube watchers, we will definitely put the links to your method and your teacher's method and all that stuff.

[00:25:59] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: That'll be in the show notes so people can find what we're talking about. 

[00:26:03] David Holter: Yeah, great. 

[00:26:04] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: I do have a good amount of specific piano related podcast episodes and I have a good amount of piano interested listeners. And so for those who are adult piano learners listening, especially returning adults that are beginning to build their confidence in their sight reading, how can they do that without falling into self-judgment or frustration?

[00:26:26] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Can you give some tips for them? 'cause they're struggling with that. We all do with sight reading. 

[00:26:31] David Holter: Well. On the one hand, none of us have mastered sight reading. My long-term goal, you could say, would be able to, if I could sit down and sight read, you know, really intense rah ov piece, well then I, maybe I've made it, but it's like there's always another level, right?

[00:26:49] David Holter: There's always another level, and none of us are perfect. And the greats, you know, the masters were hard on themselves, so. So in that sense, you're feeling like. I'm, I'm, I'm just no good at this. Part of the, the beauty in that is you're challenging yourself. It's great. But what I would recommend is if you think of any other skill that you've mastered, right?

[00:27:13] David Holter: Like, just think of a skill that you weren't born doing. You were a disaster for a while, and then you became a master. 

[00:27:20] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Yes. 

[00:27:21] David Holter: So for a lot of people touch typing. I remember being terrible at that. Um, I was 

[00:27:25] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: just thinking of a baby learning how to walk and how many times they fall flat on their face. Right.

[00:27:30] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: And keep getting up without being daunted. 

[00:27:32] David Holter: Right, right. And it still takes them a while. Think of how long it took you to actually learn how to read words. I mean, back when our brains were very young and, you know, sponges, it still took a lot of effort. It took a long time. Reading piano sheet music is more complex than reading words because words are linear.

[00:27:50] David Holter: Sheet music, you've gotta do multiple things at once and it, there are more variables and so be patient with yourself. It does take a while, but what you can do is just like any other skill that you've mastered, think about how you mastered it, right? What was the process? Well, if, if you were learning how to drive, for example, you didn't just jump in the car and go.

[00:28:16] David Holter: That's how we often think we should practice site reading. Okay, here's a new piece. Go. And it's like, no, we actually, to master any complex skill, you have to break it down, right? You have to break it down into its component skills. So you learned how to turn the car on. First you learned how to use the gas, how to use the brake, but you did this in a more simplified environment, right?

[00:28:37] David Holter: Like a parking lot or something. Hopefully you had a guide. You had somebody who knew how to break it down. If you think of any sport, like in basketball. Nobody, even LeBron James, nobody just plays games. They work on the isolated skills. So they work on dribbling by itself and they maximize their dribbling.

[00:28:57] David Holter: They work on passing by itself. They work on shooting by itself, right? And so in sight reading, we need to do the same thing. So the big one is, let's break it down into the skill of rhythm. Right. Let's work on rhythms separately, which a lot of teachers do, which is fantastic. I have the student clap and tap the rhythms.

[00:29:17] David Holter: Count the rhythms, but then separately, we should also work on note accuracy by feel without the rhythm requirement. This goes back to the blue mode concept, one thing at a time. So just work on your feel for the keys without trying to do the rhythm at the same time. That's too much all at once, you know, uh, for whatever level you're at.

[00:29:38] David Holter: And so what I like to do. Break it down even more with a student, because I used to have my students just work on feeling the keys. I would say just, you know, put a barber's bib on, just feel the keys. And even that, it's a little complicated. It's a little overwhelming 'cause there's 88 keys. So we broke it down even further.

[00:29:55] David Holter: And, and so real quick, they're shapes, like you mentioned, shapes are groups of notes. So you wanna be able to recognize any interval, you know. Right away 

[00:30:06] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: by feeling it, right? 

[00:30:08] David Holter: Yes. By seeing it and feeling it. So we work on seeing intervals and feeling them off the staff. So we, we take these intervals off the staff, so they're not even thinking note names, they're just feeling and thinking, you know, thirds, fourths, fifths.

[00:30:20] David Holter: Right? Then we start stacking those into three note shapes, four note shapes. So you're able to read the words, musical words, not just the, the notes, the individual notes, but see the relationships, the groups very fast. Then when you put those shapes back on the staff, you only need to know one note. Right.

[00:30:38] David Holter: And then you play the rest of the shape from there. 

[00:30:41] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Shortcut. 

[00:30:42] David Holter: Yeah, exactly. And other skills, you know, like just being able to feel certain hand positions in any key signature and being aware of them regions. So that's being able to leap, for example, to the ledger lines without needing to look down and anchors, which is essentially like if I can feel that my PT is on c.

[00:31:01] David Holter: I need to get up to the, the f above that, that if my right Pinky's on CI need to get up to the f Well that Pinky's like an anchor, you know, very close to the target and I can move relative to that. So we develop all these skills in isolation and then weave them back into how to read a piece of sheet music, if that makes sense.

[00:31:21] David Holter: It 

[00:31:21] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: kind of using your, your spatial. Uh, recognition. Yeah. Physical spatial recognition feel of how far movement are we needing here. That, and that's a real attentive, you know, the tactile awareness there is very definitive. It's very finite that that's a wonderful skill that so many people have missed that point in learning piano. Love that description. Thank you for taking us a little bit into the process so people can kind of get a gist of how that would work.

[00:31:51] Marker 

Jenny Leigh Hodgins: If you've ever wanted to learn piano but didn't know where to start, or if you've been frustrated by a plateau and really need a breakthrough, my Essential Piano Basics Course is designed for you based on my book, Start Piano: What You Need for Successful Learning and over 30 years of music teaching experience, it draws directly from the questions and challenges students have brought to me repeatedly over the years. It gives new and returning learners exactly what they need to start or return successfully and avoid the common frustrations that often stop progress.

In my course, you'll get clear guidance and practical strategies to build confidence practice effectively, and create a routine that fits your life without overwhelm. You'll also gain critical mindset, tools and insights to enjoy your practice and make steady musical progress. My Essential Piano Basics Course officially launches on January 6th, 2026, and it's available now for enrollment at YourCreativeChord.com/epb. Whether you're returning to piano after a break or starting fresh, this course gives you the foundation and strategies to move forward with confidence and clarity.

[00:33:04] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Now I wanna kinda switch gears and talk about some common mental and emotional hurdles that creative players face. Many creative people, not just pianists, struggle with perfectionism or overthinking.

[00:33:15] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Well, adults I think in general, struggle with that. So what would be your advice for staying open and fluid in the face of making mistakes, especially when sight reading. 

[00:33:26] David Holter: Great question. It's really important, right? So in blue mode where we take the rhythm out of it, so you don't have any steady beat requirement.

[00:33:35] David Holter: You just take all the time. You need to feel for the right notes and be sure that the notes that you're feeling match the ones that you're seeing on the page. The idea with blue mode is. We're really, we're not gonna get notes wrong usually because we're, we're taking as much time as we need to be sure by feel.

[00:33:53] David Holter: However, if we do get a note wrong, then we can pause and consider, okay, this is what I played, this is the actual, and what's the difference between the two? So mistakes are like your golden opportunities for growth because all you, what you want to do, nobody plays piano perfectly, ever. So unless they're not challenging themselves at all, you, you want to make mistakes.

[00:34:16] David Holter: If you sound really good practicing all the time, then you're not really challenging yourself. Right? So you wanna make mistakes. Just like if I shoot a basketball, which I'm awful at, so I'm sure I would miss, but if the ball goes a little bit to the right of the rim, then I would know, okay, on the next shot I'm gonna, I want it to feel about the same, physically kinesthetically.

[00:34:36] David Holter: I'm gonna move whatever my wrist, my hands. So it goes a little more to the left. I'll keep doing that adjustment until I make the shot. 

[00:34:43] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Yeah. 

[00:34:43] David Holter: And once I make the shot, if I was really paying attention to how it felt physically, 

[00:34:47] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: mm-hmm. 

[00:34:48] David Holter: Now I have like a mental recording and I'm more likely to be able to replicate that.

[00:34:51] David Holter: It's the exact same thing with feeling the keys. I 

[00:34:54] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: wanna break that down. A, I'm gonna unpack that just a little bit, excuse me, because I think that is such a critical part of learning music. What you just touched on there, you touched on so many layered skills, even in the simplicity of what you just described, but the act of recognizing you've made the mistake, stopping, evaluating what happened, figuring out the difference, and what the right thing was.

[00:35:16] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: I think that stopping and pausing and evaluating what went wrong, and I love your, you call it blue mode learning. 

[00:35:24] David Holter: Right, 

[00:35:25] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: right. 

[00:35:26] David Holter: So over the years I just got tired of saying, no steady beat requirement. Just take your time to feel without looking down until you feel for the right notes. So we started calling it blue mode because it, it calms everything down.

[00:35:37] David Holter: You have as much time as you need. So it's calm, it's deep like an ocean. 

[00:35:40] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Yeah. There's the pressure relieves the pressure of that. Right. I love that. I love that blue mode. I love that. And so the idea that you, you don't have the pressure of. Doing things, you know, at a certain speed. You just have the picture of one task, and then when you make that mistake, you pause and evaluate and figure out.

[00:35:59] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: And then you took it further into not just evaluating and assessing what did I do wrong? How can I adjust? That's critical thinking to fix it. And then you're recognizing the tactile awareness of. You know, making that move or that shift to a different, you know, physical local, like you were talking about, a little shift to the right of the rim or a little shift to the left or whatever, right?

[00:36:20] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: So you've got all these different layers, but when you're in blue mode, there's no pressure you can do that. You know, peacefully with mindfulness and that yes, is a wonderful way to remain open and fluid and to relieve this judgment that learners have about making mistakes when sight reading it. I, yes, I just unpack that a little bit so, you know, because you, you just packed a whole lot of value in that very short response and.

[00:36:45] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: And the idea is, you know that so many people have ingrained in their thought about sight reading, that it doesn't matter if you make mistakes, just play straight through it. 

[00:36:54] David Holter: Right. 

[00:36:55] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: That's a different place of sight reading skills, right, than what we're talking about. 

[00:37:00] David Holter: Right. That's red mode. Red mode, that's red.

[00:37:04] David Holter: We call that red mode. Yeah, so blue mode is where you have all the time you need and it's actually very pleasant. So for example, well, yeah, if it's not pleasant, then you're probably doing it wrong. We should talk, but it should be enjoyable. It's very important that we enjoy this because the brain learns best when it's happy, you know?

[00:37:24] David Holter: And when you're absorbed in the task and engaged. So when we're reading through sheet music in blue mode, let's say it's Bach and it's supposed to normally go kind of fast, but I love reading Bach in blue mode, especially because. It gives you extra time. It's slowing everything down. Not only slowing it down, but making it malleable.

[00:37:44] David Holter: Like you can spend more time on any beat you want and it gives a little extra time. It develops the air too. It gives a little extra time to feel and really be aware of everything Bach is doing. You know, stretches it out and you can, I love it for composition of students too. 'cause you can, you have more time to feel and hear every moment and the the voice leading and all that stuff.

[00:38:07] David Holter: But then shall I talk about red mode a little bit? 

[00:38:10] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Sure. And you know, everyone's dealing with it. That's learning to sight read, so go for it. 

[00:38:14] David Holter: So yeah, we don't stop with blue mode because rhythm and pulse is very important. Of course. That's what really makes music come to life, right? And so red mode is like the heartbeat of the music.

[00:38:27] David Holter: So red like a heart or like fire, you know? It make it's more high energy, exciting. This is closer to what you would think of as traditional site reading practice, where now we shift focus, right? We're no longer just focused on feeling the keys and developing that skill without a beat. Now we're really just focused on developing our sense of pulse and rhythm and timing.

[00:38:54] David Holter: So now you are allowed to miss notes. You can miss notes left and right, depending on how difficult the music is, as long as you stay with the beat, and that's. More common sight reading advice. I think the two really need to be practiced separately to maximize your skill. In red mode. My students are allowed to glance down occasionally.

[00:39:16] David Holter: They're encouraged not to if possible. Like don't glance down just out of habit, but glance down because you truly need to at that moment, which I do when IC sight read too. There's no reason not to. Blue mode is an opportunity to develop that connection, that flow between your eyes on the page and the feeling in the fingertips.

[00:39:34] David Holter: Whereas red mode is more like, okay, now let's, let's test it, right? Like, let's, you know, let's drive a big 16 wheeler over this bridge and see where it cracks. So I like to do one mode, one line of sheet music in red mode, for example, and then whatever, wherever spot the student, missed a note or just felt really off with that moment.

[00:39:55] David Holter: Let's go back to that moment, back up a little bit. Let's move through it in blue mode so we can reinforce right again, like the mistakes are the learning moment opportunities. So then like you say, you do it a few times and now you have this higher level of skill. So then we go back through it again. In red mode.

[00:40:14] David Holter: We're just alternating between blue mode and red mode, 

[00:40:17] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: practicing two completely different skills. Right? And for people new to sight reading, I love the approach that you have about one goal at a time. Right. That's right. We're leaving the pressure and we're focusing. That's, that's my approach in general for teaching or for anything love.

[00:40:32] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: But also like when approaching new pieces of music, first you're looking at it and, and focusing on one thing at a time, whether it's the rhythm or the accidentals or the key or what. Just look at it and notice things one thing at a time, and to get familiar visually with what you're seeing. Whether we're starting very simply with.

[00:40:53] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: You know, recognizing hand shapes or a specific feel of the topography of the keyboard, whatever it is, right? You're looking at it first before you even touch the keyboard, and then you're working on, I love you switch into one mode at a time where the blue mode is, I think, the best mode because you're relieving all the pressure.

[00:41:11] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Of more than one thing, and you're focusing on the sensation and the recognition of patterns and grasping what it feels like basically, right? And mastering that skill. And then the red mode is a completely different focus on steady beat, right? It doesn't matter. Nothing else matters. And I, and then you go back and forth and that layering of all those different approaches.

[00:41:32] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: A wonderful, wonderful teaching method, by the way. I just love that people are hearing that because it's typically, uh, new learners are returning adults. They tend to, especially adults, not necessarily younger students, at least in my experience. Yeah. We tend to pressure ourselves that we have to get it all right and do it at a certain tempo, and that's when the frustration and tension comes up.

[00:41:54] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: So I love that you weaved into that that music should be enjoyable. And so focusing on one thing at a time and really relishing that moment and the visual, the, the physical sensation, the oral sensation of it 

[00:42:08] David Holter: right, 

[00:42:08] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: is a wonderful approach to that. 

[00:42:10] David Holter: Can I ask you a question? Yeah. So you're a poet. 

[00:42:13] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Yes. 

[00:42:13] David Holter: Now when, when you sit down to write a poem, like do you demand of yourself to write?

[00:42:21] David Holter: I mean, maybe it could be an interesting activity. I remember when I was learning, when I was interested in, I thought I might be a professional writer. There was this event where everybody was trying to write a 50,000 word novel in one month, and there were other times where just to get over the writer's block, you forced yourself to write four pages in half an hour.

[00:42:38] David Holter: That kind of, that there's a place for that. In general, when you're sitting down to write poetry, like do you say, okay, Jenny, you've got half an hour, you have to write 50 lines of poetry. Go. Like, is that how no music is an art form and. Unless you wanna call, I mean, we could say construction is an art form too.

[00:43:00] David Holter: They have certain project due dates and that sort of thing, and all sorts of artists are commissioned. They have certain deadlines. But in general, the arts, it's not rushed. Like if you're writing a poem, it's necessary to have a sense of space and, and kind of let things come to you. If you're sculpting something, no one just goes at it and tries to do it in a certain timeframe.

[00:43:25] David Holter: Or painting something, you can step back, look at it. So I think that enjoyment of the craft, part of the reason we have that enjoyment is because there's space. We're not in a rush. Mm-hmm. And that's why sight reading, like, okay, you haven't practiced this at all, but now you're expecting yourself to play it perfectly.

[00:43:42] David Holter: Go. That's why it's so. It turns off so many students and they don't get better at it. 

[00:43:47] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Mm-hmm. 

[00:43:47] David Holter: It's so I think instead of creating 

[00:43:48] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: flow, it's pressure. Yeah, 

[00:43:50] David Holter: exactly. 

[00:43:51] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: It's a layered, like you're describing all arts life is a layered approach of multiple layered skills and scaffold. Exactly. That we develop until we don't need the scaffolding and then we just roll with the flow.

[00:44:02] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: That's right. People are trying to shove themselves into. Okay. It's go time flow and they haven't done, you know, the layered work over time. You're right. Yeah. It adds to the pressure of it. I love that you sure went there and I'm sure people can relate to that. I like the backing up and the, the stillness with yourself.

[00:44:19] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: I just love the blue mode. 'cause you can apply that in so many different, different directions with creative work in general. Yeah, yeah. You know, just be, still be mindful. Pick one thing and enjoy it and relish it and pay attention to it. This is just such a great approach to creativity. Speaking of creativity, I wanna ask you personally, since you were asking me about poetry, have you ever had a period of creative block or musical burnout?

[00:44:46] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: And if so, what helped you reconnect with your joy of playing or being creative 

[00:44:52] David Holter: multiple times? Yes, so well. The big one was when I was injured and I couldn't play for a few years. That was really tough for me being injured from playing the piano. So I had tendonitis in both arms. I had nerve damage. 

[00:45:06] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Oh goodness.

[00:45:07] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: And it was 

[00:45:07] David Holter: a combination of factors, but one of the contributing factors was I just, I played a lot with a very tight tense technique. That's one of the reasons I'm very passionate about teaching injury. Preventive, well coordinated, we call it technique. '

[00:45:20] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: cause you know, you know, because 

[00:45:22] David Holter: I've been there.

[00:45:22] David Holter: Yeah. And even if I hadn't gotten injured, I still would've wanted to learn this. 'cause it just makes playing everything easier, you know, fast, no longer feels fast. It's just a, a flow wave, a gesture of the arm, but. Well, yeah, the, so the, the thing that got me over that big block was basically educating myself with Dr.

[00:45:42] David Holter: Leerink, especially in a lot of the books we read in her program and basically learning how to slow down and break things down to such a level that it doesn't take genius or being born with this or that gene. It just takes going through the steps, breaking things down. Enough down. 

[00:46:01] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Yeah. 

[00:46:01] David Holter: Body mind mastery.

[00:46:03] David Holter: Was one book we read where the author is an Olympic gymnast, Dan Millman, and now he's an Olympics coach. The whole book is about how you can take any complex skill, you break it down into such small bites that each step is pretty natural, pretty intuitive for most people. You keep following the right steps and you start layering them, like you say, and then gradually you're able to do these coordinations that are more advanced, but they don't feel difficult.

[00:46:31] David Holter: So that got me playing again. But then a little later, like when I started wanting to, it was a different creative route when I was like, how do I, how do I put all of this into the best organizational path, like for my students? 'cause I want them to develop their feel for the keys. Right? And I just started every week for a year, all through 2021.

[00:46:52] David Holter: We were all on Zoom for an hour and a half, you know, every week basically. And it was an extra complimentary course. 'cause I was, I told them, I don't really know how to do this, how to teach this be, but I'm going to give you a bunch of new exercises every week for free. And then over that year we figured out what works and what doesn't.

[00:47:10] David Holter: So I think to get over a creative block, if you're a teacher or you're trying to make a course, like site reading Spark was the result of all of that. It's like, okay, let's just take what works and leave out the rest and then make it step by step. I think the thing to do is offer. Now it's so easy online, right?

[00:47:27] David Holter: Offer to help someone for free and just try out all sorts of ideas with them, preferably a group, a small group, and then see what seems to help, see what their challenges are. Then you're doing your own research then into the process. Yeah. Then you can compile it into something that works. 

[00:47:46] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Iterate 

[00:47:46] David Holter: based on feedback.

[00:47:47] David Holter: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. 

[00:47:49] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: I love that. Right. So what mindset or wellness practices help you or your students or both to stay grounded and connected to musical flow over the long term to continue to sustain that? 

[00:48:03] David Holter: I think it comes back to enjoyment. So if you're frustrated or overwhelmed. By you're practicing.

[00:48:11] David Holter: Usually it's because you haven't broken it down enough. 

[00:48:15] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Giving yourself pressure, basically. Yeah. Love that. Right? Revisit what we just said in this conversa rewind. Right? Right. That's right. So now let's take a little bit of a look at how technique and physical awareness intersect with creative growth.

[00:48:28] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: This is a great by, by the way, this is a wonderful little masterclass in site reading and how it can impact creative flow as. Music player. I love that. So you are trained in injury, preventive piano technique, as we mentioned, and I'll drop, you know, the links below so people know how to find more about that.

[00:48:46] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: How does body awareness, physical awareness, the way we physically approach the piano, influence musical expression and long-term growth? I mean, we've touched on this throughout, but can you kinda maybe summarize that in your view? 

[00:49:00] David Holter: Sure. So the physical approach to the instrument, you know. Technique with the Lister Sync Method, we define technique not as what you play, but how you play it.

[00:49:13] David Holter: So in other words, I'd rather a student be able to play a scale rather slowly, but with no unnecessary tension in the joints. Locking the joints or in, in the muscles, I should say, but no, uh, unnecessary alignment, like suboptimal alignment of the arm and the hand and all. So like the wrist dropping way low, that in our methodology that would be suboptimal.

[00:49:40] David Holter: So I'd rather see a really beautifully coordinated scale played slowly than a scale or a hand in exercise, or any of these things Played really fast. And it sounds really good, but it's very tight and the student doesn't feel good physically playing it. The reason is, if you can learn to do something optimally, physically, then you've laid a really strong foundation to build upon.

[00:50:06] David Holter: Uh, whereas if you have to be, if, if you don't feel great physically after playing, like ideally, you should feel better physically after playing the piano. Than before. To me it feels like dancing on a smaller scale with the arms and the hands. It's like a little dance floor, the piano keyboard. Right. And so how we coordinate.

[00:50:25] David Holter: All of these principles stacked to ultimately allow us to be able to play things faster and to learn music faster and all this stuff that we want. It starts from these foundational principles of optimal body use habits for playing 

[00:50:38] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: wonderful. Everybody's gonna practice dancing now in their, in their, yeah.

[00:50:42] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: So let's wrap up today with a few final thoughts to really leave our listeners inspired. If you're not inspired by now, you'll never be. 'cause this was a great conversation and, and he's, you know, David has given us a lot of wonderful tips on how to approach learning music and specifically sight reading and how sight reading learning skills can deeply influence your ability to enjoy and to make music flow without pressure and more fluently.

[00:51:08] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: So, yeah. Let's talk a little bit about what ignites you personally. What ignites your creative energy these days, musically or otherwise? What ignites your creative energy personally? 

[00:51:20] David Holter: Great question. So I really just love the way that reading music feels now, whether it's a very simple little exercise, you know, as I demonstrate something to my students.

[00:51:34] David Holter: Or whether I'm challenging myself with, you know, some Bach that's kind of fast and difficult, whatever it is. I just love the experience. Now, like I love, and this is the thing that, you know, with the whole, all anyone's talking about now, is ai, right? But to me, ai, okay, it seems to be able to understand facts and put all that together.

[00:51:53] David Holter: But what it doesn't have, what makes being human so great that I don't see AI replacing. Is the sensation, like the physical experience of being alive of movement. So now, whereas sight reading used to just feel like torture to me. Physical pain, emotional, just like panic, all of that fun stuff. Now it does feel like dancing on the keys.

[00:52:18] David Holter: So there's a flow, there's a kinesthetic enjoyment to the movement. 

[00:52:22] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Wow. 

[00:52:22] David Holter: Like just like in dancing, there's also the enjoyment of discovery. Improvisation feels more like. Creating something like blazing on your own trail, whereas sight reading feels more like riding down a path that some really great, you know, path biller put there in the woods, or like a roller coaster.

[00:52:39] David Holter: It's something that somebody designed and you're going for the ride and it's fun. And so it's like all of that actually was a combination of developing my feel for the keys and developing technique for flow. So the experience of keeping my eyes on the page, feeling the keys, hearing the music. That flow state, that feedback loop is just really enjoyable.

[00:53:01] David Holter: Even if nobody can hear it. Of course it's fun to perform or people can hear, but even if you're just by yourself, it's well worth the time and effort to develop that for the experience of it. So what lights me up is helping people to be able to experience that more and more. 'cause it just makes life richer.

[00:53:18] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Yeah. 

[00:53:19] David Holter: And it's like you're one with the music. 

[00:53:21] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Yeah. 

[00:53:21] David Holter: And it it is. And so even just teaching the fundamentals. I get excited about even seeing somebody just flow through a scale with a little more freedom in the wrist. It's exciting because as I'm sure you know, as a teacher, it's like the little things are the big things.

[00:53:37] David Holter: So when you get the fundamentals, when a student starts to master the basics, you know that that's gonna lead them foundational to really great places. Yeah. 

[00:53:46] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Yes, 

[00:53:47] David Holter: totally 

[00:53:47] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: beautiful. Very inspirational, everybody. Now wants to go play their piano. Good. Good. Enjoy. So, great. This has been really phenomenally wonderful.

[00:53:57] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: This is a just a little masterclass in how to approach sight reading in a much more enjoyable way, in a more effective way, and that's fruitful. Towards really being able to express more naturally and authentically. And I, I, I'm really grateful for that. That's just, and it resonates a hundred percent with how I approach teaching and how I approach learning as well.

[00:54:19] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: So, and even still, like you say, multiple things that we can always still be working on and, and it will never end, right. But. It can always be enjoyable as you go through. So I've really enjoyed learning from you. You have such a beautifully articulate, gentle way and clear way of explaining things, and I'm sure your students really appreciate you for that.

[00:54:39] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: And speaking of that, where can our listeners go to learn more about your work or join your Sightreading Spark Community? Can you share all the things and how they can find you? 

[00:54:49] David Holter: My Facebook group is called Piano Sightreading Community, and it's a place where I share a lot of strategies and tips. It's a private free group on Facebook that you can join.

And then if you go to SightreadingSpark.com, that's where I offer these workshops that are free or low cost workshops online. So you just go to SightreadingSpark.com to sign up for that. And then at those workshops, I usually talk about my course more too, for people that wanna study with me more deeply.

[00:55:22] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Walking people through a lot of what we discussed today so they can learn skills. 

David Holter: Right. 

Jenny Leigh Hodgins: I highly recommend this 'cause I've gone to one of those. It's very well laid out, very clear, very helpful for any level of learner interested in improving site reading skills in general. So thank you so much, David. I appreciate, thank you so much.

[00:55:41] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: Your thoughtful insight and your practical and accessible. An articulate and clear approach to music. Thank you. And skill development and how you've expressed it all for us. And it's very clear that your work encourages more than just technical ability. It offers a path toward expressive, physical, mindful, and creatively empowered musicianship that is enjoyable.

[00:56:03] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: So. I wanna just thank you again and then to you, our dear listener. If you enjoyed this and you know somebody who might benefit from today's conversation, please share this episode with them. Thank you for listening to your Creative Cord podcast. Until next time, keep nurturing your creative flow and inspired living.

[00:56:19] David Holter: Thank you, Jenny.

[00:56:21] Jenny Leigh Hodgins: My Essential Piano Basics Course is now available. Based on my book, Start Piano: What You Need for Successful Learning and over 30 years of music teaching experience, it addresses the challenges most new and returning piano students face. You'll learn practical strategies to build a solid foundation, practice effectively, and gain confidence at the piano.

Enroll today at YourCreativeChord.com/epb and start making steady, enjoyable piano progress.

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