Making Music at Home for the Holidays with Nate Shaw

Do you remember your first musical experience? Were you forced to learn an instrument as a kid? For most of us, learning to play an instrument was a formal occasion we couldn’t wait to get out of. But that’s because Nate Shaw was not our teacher. With an incredible 30 year long career, which has included playing jazz for the US State Department in Europe and writing music for Oprah, Nate created an innovative way to teach music to both children and adults. Nate believes music to be an universal experience we should all engage with, especially as a family. Listen to the episode and find out more about how you can reconnect with music and bring it into your home on a daily basis. What you’ll get out of tuning in: How to unlock your inner musician  How to normalize the music experience How to bring music into your family routine Links Mentioned in Episode: Get your family band going  Get the Big Music Games App Check out the Living Ayurveda Course Get some free resources Show Highlights: Playing music without any skills Getting people to move past the fear of exposure The physicality of learning how to play an instrument Timestamps: 2:43 The universality of the music experience 15:21 Having fun and being social by learning to play music 31:46 Using your environment to learn music 44:26 Experiencing music as a family during the holidays Guest Bio: Nate is an entrepreneur, musician and teacher. For the past 30 years he has been bringing his mission of building community through music to the world. Whether it’s playing jazz for the US State Department in Europe, writing music for Oprah, or leading 20 faculty at the school he co-founded in 2009, the Brooklyn Music Factory, Nate is dedicated to inspiring new relationships, and deepening existing ones. At a time when people find themselves isolated more and more by technology and the pandemic, Nate’s mission is to inspire a renewed focus on human connection. Working with tens of thousands of students in his 30 year teaching career, Nate is recognized as a visionary of music pedagogy and has built a robust, game-based music curriculum used by thousands of students in New York and around the globe. So far, the Brooklyn Music Factory has published hundreds of BLAM (Big Lessons About Music) Games, 2 levels of a guitar book, a group piano course, a Mini Keys curriculum and an iOS app: Big Music Games. As a band leader, he has released ten records and guested on many more.