Learning Spanish is like learning piano (ft. James Atin-Godden)

Puedes aprender español más rápido You can learn Spanish faster si copias algunas técnicas de los pianistas. if you copy some pianists' techniques. Hoy vamos a hablar de estas similitudes Today we're going to talk about these similarities con el músico James Atin-Godden. with musician James Atin-Godden. Hey, good to be here. Hello. James ha creado libros para aprender piano James has created books for learning piano inspirados en la música de juegos y películas. inspired by music from games and

movies. James, cuéntanos un poco de ti. James, tell us a little about yourself. ¿De dónde eres y qué estás haciendo ahora? Where are you from and what are you doing now? I'm from Canada. I was born in a small town. I have lived in Toronto for about 12 years now. I am a musician, composer, producer. I do a whole variety of different music related things. I made the A-G Piano Book Series. I do a lot of music for comedy right now, comedy shows. And I produce artists, among all kinds of other stuff.

James, yo estaba diciendo a mi audiencia James, I was telling my audience que hay técnicas que sirven that there are techniques that work para aprender español y para aprender piano. to learn Spanish and to learn piano. Empecemos con practicar lento. Let's start with slow practice. Algunos estudiantes quieren hablar rápido, Some students want to talk fast, "como los hablantes nativos". "like native speakers". Pero cuando hacen esto But when they do this terminan sonando más extranjeros they end

up sounding more foreign porque no ponen cuidado en la pronunciación because they do not pay attention to pronunciation y cometen más errores. and make more mistakes. Cuando les digo que bajen la velocidad When I tell them to slow down empiezan a ser más conscientes they start to become more aware de su propia pronunciación of their own pronunciation y cometen menos errores. and make fewer mistakes. James, cuando yo tomaba clases de piano James, when I was taking piano lessons mi profesora tamb

ién insistía my teacher also insisted en que yo tenía que practicar lento. that I had to practice slowly. ¿Por qué insisten en esto los profesores de piano? Why do piano teachers insist on this? It's interesting. I think that there are almost two steps to learning. There's the step where your brain has to be trained and it has to absorb information slowly to see the whole picture. So you really have to slow it down so you can see what's actually happening. Because one of the problems with going

fast is you rely on your default, you rely on habits, your brain's not thinking, so you end up relying on muscle memory. So it's important to slow down to see the details. And then at a certain point, then you can speed up. And it's actually better. Because at a certain point, your hands have learned it. You can rely on your muscles. You don't need to be training yourself anymore. But when you're first learning something, going slowly is super important to absorbing all of the information. Mucha

s gracias, James. Thank you very much, James. Hablemos ahora de la repetición. Let's talk now about repetition. Hablar en un idioma nuevo y tocar el piano Speaking in a new language and playing the piano son actividades físicas. are physical activities. Los músculos tienen que acostumbrarse Muscles have to get used to a hacer movimientos nuevos. to making new motions. De hecho, cuando practicas pronunciación In fact, when you practice pronunciation a veces te puede doler la cara sometimes your f

ace can hurt debido al esfuerzo. due to the effort. A veces uno tiene que repetir la misma frase Sometimes you have to repeat the same phrase cientos de veces. hundreds of times. Solo así desarrollas la "memoria muscular" This is the only way to develop "muscle memory" para poder pronunciar con fluidez. to be able to pronounce fluently. Voy a citar una frase de un profesor de piano: I am going to quote a phrase from a piano teacher: "Los principiantes repiten "Beginners repeat unas docenas de ve

ces a few dozen times y se preguntan por qué no están mejorando. and wonder why they are not improving. Pero los músicos profesionales But professional musicians repiten cientos o miles de veces." repeat hundreds or thousands of times." James, ¿qué opinas tú? James, what do you think? I don't know about a thousand. I think if you have to repeat something a thousand times, it might be too hard. The one thing I have the hardest time with teaching is if you have a piece of music in front of you, al

most everybody wants to try to play through the whole piece of music. Everybody wants to get through the whole thing slowly. And then you're like, "Okay, I guess I'll try that again." And then you go through the whole thing. But the better way to practice is to zoom in on little spots. A little like... And just do that spot over and over again. And that's the best way to learn. The better way to learn is to go slow and zoom in on things and just do that spot over and over again. It stops becomin

g a piece of music at that point and just becomes kind of a mental exercise that feels really satisfying when you get it. And then when you try to play the whole, you have a better sense of what you're doing because you have a better understanding of each little section. Ahora que lo mencionas, James, Now that you mention it, James, sí, es muy importante repetir yes, it is very important to repeat solo una pequeña sección a la vez. only one small section at a time. Hablemos ahora de la memorizac

ión. Now let's talk about memorization. Cuando has memorizado muchas frases, When you have memorized many phrases, puedes construir frases similares sin pensar. you can build similar phrases without thinking. Es como tener una "biblioteca mental" It is like having a "mental library" de "pedazos" del idioma. of "chunks" of the language. James, ¿cómo es para un pianista? James, what is it like for a pianist? To be honest, I can't imagine playing music without memorization because I've never been a

strong music reader. That's never been my strong suit. When I was a kid, I would always memorize things. I would try to pick apart the core. I'd find the core concept of the piece of music and then I would go completely from my memory. I would find the patterns and then I would go from there. I think that for improvising musicians and for composers, what we're relying on is we have a database of musical ideas that are baked into our brain, like sentences and fragments of a language. And we're p

utting them together in different orders. You know? Similarly, when you're speaking, you're improvising. You're improvising new content as you're saying things. You're not repeating an exact sentence that you've memorized, but you are drawing from fragments of sentences you've heard before or said before, I guess. James, es fantástico. James, that's fantastic. Acabas de describir en unos segundos You have just described in a few seconds el proceso de aprender a hablar un idioma the process of le

arning to speak a language mejor que cualquier profesor de idiomas. better than any language teacher. Es exactamente así. It is exactly like that. Cuando hablamos estamos improvisando, When we talk we are improvising, igual que un músico, y tomamos fragmentos just like a musician, and we take fragments de oraciones que hemos escuchado antes. of sentences we have heard before. Muchísimas gracias por esa respuesta. Thank you very much for this answer. Hablemos ahora de la transcripción. Let's now

talk about transcription. La técnica consiste en esto: The technique consists of this: Tú escuchas una frase muchas veces You listen to a sentence many times hasta entender cada palabra until you understand every single word y entonces tú escribes lo que escuchaste and then you write what you heard con mucho cuidado, sin omitir ni una letra. very carefully, without omitting a single letter. Más tarde comparas tu transcripción Later you compare your transcript con el texto original, corriges tus

errores with the original text, you correct your mistakes y vuelves a escuchar las partes difíciles. and you listen to the difficult parts again. Esto es increíblemente efectivo This is incredibly effective para mejorar tu español. for improving your Spanish. James, ¿puedes contarnos James, can you tell us cómo es la técnica de la transcripción how is the transcription technique en el contexto de la música in the context of music y cuáles son los beneficios? and what are the benefits? I haven't

actually transcribed anything in a long time, not since university, and I hated doing it in university, but I'm sure it helped me a lot. I'm sure it was great because it's the ability to see, to really map out and see what you're hearing. Any time where you can zoom in and understand something more clearly is always going to help you. When I was writing the book series, I had to... That was a point where I did have to transcribe things. I had to translate the melodies I heard in my mind onto the

computer, into writing and into music. And I think that made me an infinitely better musician because it made me see patterns, and made me see things clearly, and made me stop and look at it. So I imagine it helps with language as much as it helps with music. Muchas gracias, James. Thank you very much, James. Estamos de acuerdo en que We agree that la transcripción no es un ejercicio "divertido", transcription is not a "fun" exercise, pero ayuda muchísimo. but it helps a lot. James, hablemos ah

ora de la imitación. James, let's now talk about imitation. Yo recomiendo a mis estudiantes I recommend to my students una técnica llamada "chorusing". a technique called "chorusing". Consiste en escuchar una sola frase It consists of listening to a single phrase muchas veces, y hablar al mismo tiempo many times, and talking at the same time tratando de copiar el ritmo, la entonación, trying to copy the rhythm, the intonation, los cambios de volumen y más. volume changes and more. Esta es una té

cnica clave This is a key technique para mejorar el acento, for improving accent, porque el habla no es simplemente because speech is not simply una sucesión de sonidos individuales. a succession of individual sounds. El habla natural es musical. Natural speech is musical. Tiene melodía, variaciones de tempo, ritmo, It has melody, tempo variations, rhythm, y esto es diferente en cada idioma. and this is different in each language. James, ¿cómo es en el mundo de la música? James, what is it like

in the music world? ¿Los estudiantes de piano Do piano students tratan de imitar una grabación en particular? try to imitate a particular recording? I have a few students who way prefer to use that method of learning than to read music. I have this one student who-- There's these videos where the notes fall down onto a piano. I'm sure you've seen that, right? There's a piano on the bottom. These lines come down and hit the piano, and tells you when to play them. And I have one kid who's learned

crazy pieces of music from that, just from watching it and playing along. There's an age-old tradition of doing it that way. I'm sure people do that all the time. That's a whole way of learning music. Continuando con este punto, James, Continuing on this point, James, las canciones de tus libros the songs in your books están en Spotify y Apple Music. are on Spotify and Apple Music. ¿Cómo recomendarías a los estudiantes How would you recommend students usar estas grabaciones? use these recordings

? I guess however they want. There's also backing tracks that you can play along with. That's kind of fun. I would suggest, obviously, play along with the backing tracks when you feel really confident. I would listen to the example tracks, just to get a sense. I wouldn't suggest playing along with them at first, just because they're a little fast, I think. I think the goal is just to hear it, and just to hear what it's supposed to sound like. Sometimes I found when I was reading music when I was

first starting, the rhythm is the hardest. It's really hard to translate seeing it on the page and making it feel natural, making rhythm feel natural. And for me, always just hearing it is so helpful. I always just wonder, "How does it go?" You know? And then once I hear how it goes, "Oh, it goes like that." "Okay, got you." Then I would use the music just to figure out what the actual notes are. Yeah, but sometimes you just need to hear how the song goes. So that's what those example tracks ar

e for. Esto me recuerda que This reminds me that cuando aprendes un idioma y lees una frase when you learn a language and read a sentence a veces crees que sabes cómo debería sonar, sometimes you think you know how it should sound, pero cuando oyes el audio suena diferente. but when you hear the audio it sounds different. Por eso mi regla para mis estudiantes es: So my rule for my students is: primero escucha el audio, y después lee. first listen to the audio, then read. James, volviendo al tema

de tus libros, James, back to the topic of your books, son muchísimo más divertidos they are a lot more fun que la música que mi maestra me daba that the music my teacher gave me o la música que he encontrado en apps. or music I have found in apps. ¿Cuál es la idea principal What is the main idea de tus libros para aprender piano? of your piano learning books? The main idea of the piano learning books is to inspire, is to provide material for students to learn piano and inspire joy and creativi

ty. I used to teach piano lessons full-time for a while, and I did not like the materials that I was using to teach with. I didn't think the kids I was teaching really responded well to them, and I decided I could make a cooler one that would appeal more to kids in the modern era. So that's what I did. James, si alguien quiere comprar tus libros, James, if anyone wants to buy your books, ¿dónde puede encontrarlos? where can they find them? They can find my books on Amazon and on Shopify. Those a

re the main places. I suggest if you're in the US, Shopify only if you're in the United States, but it's way cheaper on Shopify. If you're anywhere else, go to Amazon. Just search up the A-G Piano Books. James, ¿qué plataformas en línea usas? James, what online platforms do you use? ¿Dónde podemos seguirte en internet? Where can we follow you on the Internet? I suppose my Instagram or my TikTok. Both are @JamesAGMusic. Muchísimas gracias, James, Thank you very much, James, por compartir tu punto

de vista como músico for sharing your point of view as a musician y habernos acompañado en este video. and for joining us in this video. Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Miguel. This has been really fun. Yeah, my pleasure. Good to be here. Debo agregar que los libros de James I should add that James' books también están disponibles en formato PDF are also available in PDF format que puedes imprimir en casa. that you can print at home. De hecho, así es como yo los compré, In fact, that's h

ow I bought them, para evitar el costo de importar libros físicos. to avoid the cost of importing physical books. Cada libro en PDF cuesta unos 12 CAD, Each PDF book costs about 12 CAD, o unos 10 USD al tipo de cambio de hoy. or about 10 USD at today's exchange rate. Abajo voy a dejar un enlace para comprarlos. Below I will leave a link to buy them. Aunque James creó estos libros para niños, Although James created these books for children, yo estoy tocando la música de estos libros I am playing

the music of these books casi todos los días. almost every day. Quiero agradecer los comentarios I would like to thank the comments que varios músicos han dejado en mis videos. that several musicians have left in my videos. Estos comentarios inspiraron esta entrevista. These comments inspired this interview. Y quiero agradecer especialmente And I would especially like to thank a los más de 250 miembros de este canal. the more than 250 members of this channel. Ustedes hacen posible You guys make

it possible que este canal siga adelante. for this channel to keep moving forward. Los miembros de este canal tienen acceso Members of this channel have access a lecciones exclusivas de fonética española to exclusive lessons on Spanish phonetics y de input comprensible. and comprehensible input. Aquí tienes la lista completa Here is the full list de estas lecciones para miembros. of these lessons for members. Presiona el botón "Join" Press the "Join" button y tendrás acceso a esta lista. and you

will have access to this list. Adiós, y que el español te acompañe. Goodbye, and may the Spanish language be with you.