Steven Sharp Nelson - Cello Guy

About This Episode

Steven Sharp Nelson - Cello Guy shares insights from their mission in South Korea & New York and how those experiences shaped their career and life.

About Steven Sharp Nelson - Cello Guy

Steven Sharp Nelson - Cello Guy is featured in this episode of The Best 2 Podcast, sharing how their mission experience influenced their personal and professional journey.

Key Topics

• Mission experiences in South Korea & New York
• Career development and growth
• Personal transformation through service
• Lessons learned and applied

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Full Transcript

Full Transcript

it’s 5:30 a.m. in the distant Cambodian province of batong the Sun Peaks above the Horizon as the local market begins hauling in fresh produce for the day having dragged myself out of bed and into the common room I lie on the floor of our two-story apartment still exhausted searching for motivation to do something exercise related a few push-ups at least in the background The Piano Guys 2012 piece The Cello Song plays the arresting Fusion of its eight distinct cellos Wasing over me I could have never imagined then during my mission that 10 years later I had the chance to speak with the Creator and performer of that song cell guy Steven sharp Nelson about his own mission yet here we are Steve is best known for his role in The Piano Guys a musical group famous for their unique blend of classical and contemporary music they released 13 albums eight of which have reached number one on Billboard’s classical or New Age albums charts the piano guys are renowned for performing in breathtaking locations around the world including at top the Great Wall of China beside the ruins of Petra inside the Midway Ice Castles at the edge of Southern Utah’s Red Rock Cliffs and in front of the Lincoln Memorial during a presidential inauguration among many other stunning venues their music videos on YouTube have amassed over 2.4 billion views Steve for his part is a Pioneer in cello percussion think August Rush for the cello in addition to his accomplishments with The Piano Guys he’s released three solo albums and holds degrees in music and public administration from the University of Utah Steve served his mission in both South Korea and New York from 1995 to 1997 by now I spoke Spen to many people about their mission experiences but I’m not sure I’ve met anyone with as much passion for their missionary Service as Steve has for his that’s really saying something in this episode my sister Skiby a musical virtuoso in her own right joins me to talk with Steve about his winding road to a musical career quoting King Benjamin at top chich chanita the innate value of classical music how missions promote a deep gratitude for the most basic things of Life relationships forged on and because of the mission and much more all this coming up next [Music] that’s the hardest part about religion right now you know our spirituality is not declined in the United States in fact 80% of people still believe in God according to a recent research study that was just released but like 20% identify with an organized religion and that has just plummeted in the last 10 years so it’s the rise of the nuns have you heard that nun meaning n o NE e not any I’m not affiliated with any religion and a lot of it has to do with this principle that we’re talking about we’re trying to understand that this is not a give me it’s what can I give culture and that’s the challenge and I’ve tried to teach my kids that they’re like oh church is boring and it’s like well okay so you’re looking to get instead of give or if somebody’s like I’m out of the church okay I could usually diagnose and say it’s probably because they were expecting to get something rather than give something well I agree with that I think especially with the ysas that was the hardest thing for me when I was in YSA is like my experience it felt like it set me up to be a taker right everything is like how can we give to you guys do you guys want to have a slip and slide party or do you want to do this or that and you lose a lot of the element of serving people and feeling like you’re doing something like a mission right that’s why missions are so good you’re serving you’re doing all this stuff and then you come home and it’s like okay your kids again you guys want to have a Nerf party for our activity this week it’s like this is stupid you know what I mean I love that perspective Sam I get that I think people’s Faith their desire to be part of the organization dies on the vine when that happens because they’re like I’m not needed I’m not helping anybody anymore yeah and if we’re not helping everybody get in a lattice work that’s all connecting to Jesus it’s worthless it just in the end it really is yeah well good luck thank you I I love it I actually really enjoy it I’m the only one in all of the leadership Bishops High Council State presidency that still have young kids at home and so it was like a big deal to accept it and go all in for it but honestly I just everything I have in my life is because of God and so when he comes comes calling I just I raise my hand I keep my hand in the air and when he asks I show up and most of the time I’m probably a less effective instrument in his hands but I show up and he knows I will show up and I’m willing to listen and make mistakes and not be afraid of putting myself out there asking the right questions because I really think that we need to reframe our whole gospel mentality to a gospel of questions not a gospel of sermons and a gospel of judgment and boxes like putting everything in labels and boxes and everything it’s a gospel of inspired questions and that’s been a really fun Journey for me especially in this YSA world is it’s a great place because it’s the decade of decisions and so it’s a really great place to practice inspired questions yeah well man now I kind of want to be a member of your stake speak like that love to have we would love to have you well you’ll have to come have my wife and my daughter too so no slip and slide parties I promise okay okay fair deal the first question is basic it’s just how did you find your way into a career as a musician well I promised my wife that I would never be a full-time musician one of my first promises I broken to my wife that’s really sad and you know what your listeners I’m sure they’re grappling with what kind of career should I go after it’s a huge decision and some people say God doesn’t care I don’t know if I love when people say that because I think he cares about everything in your life I really do and he cares about you and he cares about helping you to become who you’re supposed to become and a career is a giant part of that so I really don’t buy that I don’t buy the God doesn’t care thing that I’ve heard often said I get what maybe they’re trying to hint at which is you could do pretty much anything you want but glorify him in it be an instrument give more than you get like we were just talking about but for me I think if you’re going to choose a career as arduous I I almost want to say adversarial when it comes to finding success and the pittance that most people make when they’re going after something like this my belief is that you shouldn’t choose it unless it chooses you and my recommendation is if you’re going to choose a career in art or something that is not as financially viable or doesn’t really fit into the remuneration categories that the traditional science or technically based careers do I say go after it but this is what I would suggest is if you jump in too early you will become a slave to it and you will actually be in an adversarial relationship in other words you will grow to dislike it something that you loved and were so passionate about when you live your dream there are side effects it becomes a nightmare unless it stays as a dream for you as a passion and the only way to do that at the outset and people will disagree with me but this is my opinion is do not do it fulltime from the get-go do it it as Moonlighting as a part-time as a side hustle make enough in a career that you can tolerate that palatable or that’s fulfilling I mean that’s even better when I was doing music on the side I was in venture capital I was in real estate development I was in Venture philanthropy I was really enjoying what I was learning it still wasn’t my fish and water feeling I still didn’t feel like I was in my natural habitat but I did feel like I was skirting around it and really learning wonderful things that were portable enough to take anywhere I want it in a career but I would recommend if your passion does not compensate you if it doesn’t pay very well let’s just go very basic if it doesn’t pay very well but you love it it’s your passion you feel gifted in it my recommendation is to work in a career you can tolerate you can enjoy enough where it makes the living but gives you flexibility look for flexibility and quality of life enough where you can work a side hustle and then if that side hustle outgrows your day job that’s exactly what happens to me I was working as a musician Moonlighting and we put up a couple videos on YouTube and they blew up so much that it demanded me it demanded my full attention and my full day and that’s a wonderful thing if you can get there I’m not a formulaic person I don’t really think gospel formulas career formulas and nice packaged beautiful Tick Tock based formulas really are realistic because they try to be one siiz fits-all and we’re just too different as human beings and than the good Lord above for that I’m so grateful for that I would think of it more as a ven diagram and one circle is what you’re passionate about and that’s an easy one to nail you what keeps you up at night what gets you so excited that you start speeding up when you talk about it to others right the next one is what you’re naturally good at that’s a difference hey I am passionate about sushi I took a sushi class the instructor said I was the worst sushi chef he had ever seen and I felt like I deserved a trophy or something as a result like that’s pretty impressive that I could but he really said you’re the worst guy I’ve ever seen when it comes to Sushi I was like okay so I’m passionate don’t have any natural gifts in it okay so that’s out the third ven is what you can add value to the world that will be enough where they’ll pay you for it where it’s sustainable so I could be really good at a particular thing and I’m really passionate about it but it’s underwater basket weaving and nobody wants to buy baskets that I wo underwater so then it’s not viable and so it actually becomes a drag rather than something that’s fulfilling and sustainable and that you could support a family with which inevitably that’s a huge part of career so think about it as three Vents and if you live in the center as much and you can bounce back and forth like I said but if you live in the center of those vents you’ll find this incredible fulfillment in your life and that it shifts and changes waxes and waines and Es and flows but generally if you take that approach involve involving God in this process turning your life over to him by using the hints that he’s dropping at you through those three vents we think we go to him and we say what should I do and wait around that will never get answered it will never get answered you go just go and try to find the packets and the hints that he gives you in those three circles and you’ll be able to zero in on it so when you were Moonlighting as a calist and everything before you’d Gone Big with the piano guys did you ever feel like you were going to get there well at first I wanted to be a famous musician and I wanted it for the wrong reasons and I think that’s pretty human and I don’t fault myself for it really I don’t beat myself up for it and I’m so grateful God did not let me have it then this was premission and I really had this sort of Sandy Foundation concept of Fame and Fortune and you know in the back of my mind I was like I could make a difference and stuff but that was just sort of a shade really it was more about I wanted to be famous I wanted to be rich a lot of us think that way and I don’t know where it really came from there are lots of different sources but I’m so glad I didn’t get it then because it would have been as a tidal wave swept me off my feet and carried me off to a place i’ never want to be so be patient and know that your dead ends are detours and have faith that your dead ends are detours and don’t be afraid to practice practice practice the principles that you want to have as a human being and don’t be afraid of failure like make friends with failure I wish somebody would have told me that earlier in my life is the more you’re willing to put yourself out there and that’s this is what I love and we’re going to be getting into this about a mission man talk about failure Central it is such a petri dish for failure it is awesome like when it’s in the middle of it it’s not so awesome but looking back I’m so glad that I had an opportunity for 2 years to fall on my face and really recognize and be humbled and be submissive enough to recognize that I need a lot of work on a lot of things and if I do it alone I’m not going to get very far so on your Pano guys Adventures that’s kind of the thing right as you play all these crazy places is there a favorite place of yours that you’ve played there’s a natural Arc to all aspects of life and we try to defy this typically in life you’ll be heading up an arc and it’ll Peak and then it’ll come back down and we do things drastically and desperately to try to bend that Ark back up in an unnatural way but life is just natural arcs and the secret I love what Arthur Brooks talks about this Christian social scientist he talks about how instead of trying to bend that Arc up with irrational behaviors and bad choices find another Arc that’s related and still on its way up and I want to talk about that later on of where I am in that process because The Piano Guys Arc is actually declining at this point and I used to be afraid of it I used to be upset at that I used to be embarrassed by it f it yeah yeah but now I’m kind of like this is exciting it’s an opportunity to do some Arc jumping so I just wanted to explain that because yes ouro was to find incredible locations Seven Wonders of the World Scotland Castle the Death Star so many different places we fil and on a beach at Cliff’s Edge speeding train Beach all of these fun places pretty much you name it feel like you guys have done it and we loved it and the public loved it and this is when YouTube was user curated which means that you as you’re watching Youtube would decide what you want to see you don’t do that anymore you don’t decide what you see an algorithm decides what you see and be very warned that algorithm has no interest in your personal well-being or health it doesn’t don’t be a slave to the algorithm just keep in mind that if you’re in charge if you want to remain in charge you’ve got to understand that the algorithm is what’s making choices for you but we started when it wasn’t that way there was no such thing as an algorithm it was user curated and thank goodness for that because if we were to do it now music videos don’t work anymore because the algorithm doesn’t favor them because they don’t keep people on long enough interesting and they don’t sell products because you’re engrossed in the music not in the car part that some dude’s talking about as he’s repairing right so it’s a big difference so we actually don’t do music videos anymore and it makes me sad I miss them I really do miss them they were a lot of work but from the comments it seems like they did some good in the world and it was something that nobody was doing and I know this is a long answer to your question of where is my favorite place but that explanation is important to me to put out there because I don’t want you to have the expectation whoever is listening I don’t want you to have the expectations that once you found your groove that it’ll stay that way for a long time I think in today’s world there’s so much shifting it’s viitala pricious that one moment it works and one moment it doesn’t and what you’ve got to do and this is what the mission teaches you is you’ve got to be psychologically flexible that is the number one trait of happy people right now according to a recent research study psychological flexibility what does that mean well that means when something doesn’t turn out the way you think it’s going to or something changes dramatically or drastically in the moment how do you react psychological flexibility says huh okay well let’s make the most of this I can be flexible let’s roll with it that’s cool inflexibility psychological inflexibilities you got to be kidding me this is the dumbest This is BS this is the dumbest thing ever no this and then all of a sudden you’re actually negating every bit of your possible Eternal progression in that very moment at least temporarily so for us yes we made music videos and some of my favorite places are the Great Wall of China and a top chich chanita I loved chichan I rarely tell this story but we were allowed to film on top of the ruins of chich chinita nobody’s allowed to stand on those W the only reason we were is because the head of all the archaeological sites he had two sons that loved our music W and so he said he I love the way he said this he looked at us when we asked for permission to film on these RS his assistant supervisor said no you’re crazy we never do that nobody ever gets to do that and he looks at looks around and he says I cannot let you do this but if I don’t my children will never forgive me so he lets us on top of these ruins and I got to tell you as I’m standing on top of the ruins I recited King Benjamin’s speech oh that’s cool and it gives me chills to think about it because we had just played the Great Wall of China and here’s what’s interesting guys Emperor kin of the kin Dynasty he’s the one that build the Terracotta Warriors you’re familiar with that right he spent decades and literally hundreds of thousands of lives of his subjects to build what a tomb in which a terracotta a clay Army was supposedly going to protect him in the afterlife he sacrificed everything in order to build something that was of zero value do you know when he died 25 years later King Benjamin was born and here’s a man that instead of insisting that people sacrifice their lives to build a false precept and tomb he says in as much as you are in the service of your fellow beings you’re in the service of your God you can’t imagine at that time how God Centric he was to preach that he didn’t even tax his people he worked his own garden so to stand on top of the ruins whether he was there or not it was not important to me but we know enough that it might have been in that General vicinity and to cite those words at the top of those ruins was a life-changing moment to me a recognition of how powerful a life can be when it is given to God and when God can work through that individual how much he or she can impact the people around him and that is my why of why I served a mission anyway that’s a longwind answer you know this is the problem if you ask question it might be like remember my superpower is ADHD that’s my weakness that’s turned into a strength by God and the thing I love about it is this is so cool it’s such a cool principle we have to remember your weakness should fuel your humility not inflame your inadequacy that’s a big principle to understand for premission for on Mission and post Mission I’ll say it again your weakness should fuel your humility not inflame your inadequacy in other words your weakness shouldn’t make you feel like you’re not enough your weakness should remind you that his grace meaning Jesus Christ’s grace is sufficient for you great so Skiby had a couple questions about classical music that I very curious to hear your perspective on let’s Elevate this conversation Sam you want to go get a sand or something see we could spend hours I’m tell we could spend hours you and I are both classically trained musicians classical music we feel it it runs through our veins we love it right yeah and you’re talking about how the world is Shifting and attention spans are shifting the things that people watch are shifting I have felt personally a decline in the desire to be involved in classical music people don’t know classical music as well as I think they used to and that hurts me because I feel like it’s got this great value and can add so much to people’s lives so what role do you see classical music playing in our world’s future and how do you find ways to try and make classical music relevant to a contemporary audience oh man okay so we have three hours for this answer maybe we’re gonna do a Joe Rogan episode here that’s what we should that’s really funny that’s your next that’s your next Rising Arc Stephen you’re gonna bring on musicians and you’re just gonna go for hours that be pretty cool actually Skiby it’s an awesome question and I’d love to really get as in-depth as possible maybe kind of rain me in a little bit because this is a subject I feel very passionate about in fact I have a book in the works that will never get finished because I’m ADHD it’s how to teach your kids to love classical music and I don’t mean that that’s exclusively the music that they would ever listen to I don’t have that false expectation but I do believe it is the most nutritious music you can listen to I now having said that I would never impose broccoli only on my children every meal it would be silly I think it would be unwise but it would be unhealthy even even though it’s healthy it’s extremism and there are classical elitists that are single-handedly destroying classical music because they’re insisting on Extreme Fidelity to the music and I actually don’t believe that I believe classical music is the ancestor of all the music we listen to today and it should be respected and appreciated as such but it is the ancestor and it is not as alive today as it once was and that’s okay let us appreciate it in the context that it was presented and understand that as we build our Cornucopia of our music library that classical music should be a fundamental veggies aspect of the plate of our playlists plate and it’s hard for people to wrap their heads around that because classical pieces are volatile they’re long they feel exclusive and esoteric in the sense that they push people out rather than invite them in because you have to understand a certain level it’s not instant gratification yeah right and again so if that’s the nutrition if that’s the veggies what’s our sugar our sugar is our pop music and it’s been just like American diet not the other country not so many other country we have super concentrated sugar to the point where we’ve got it down to a high fructose science where we’re not just putting sugar in we’re putting highly toxic levels of super concentrated unnatural sugars in our food that don’t need it I mean can you believe that we have orange juice with added sugar that mind like really are you serious you’re adding sugar to orange juice your daily sugar intake for breakfast it’s ridiculous and so that’s what our music industry is right now is it super highly concentrated sugar bursts and sugar hits but I promise you it comes with a crash it really does if that’s all you’re listening to day in day out there’s not nutritious content and value now I love dessert you’re not going to tell me to get rid of dessert I don’t believe in extreme diets that push stuff out I believe in moderation all foods should be enjoyed and so I believe in pop music but I believe it in moderation and do I listen to classical music day in day out I don’t I don’t I probably am the biggest fan of classical music that I know of in my circle and yet I still don’t listen to it day and day out I believe in what Bobby mcfarren said he said if you listen to only one kind of music your whole life it’s like insisting on living in one room of your house your entire life nobody would ever do that what the piano guys have done is we’ve approached it as a green smoothie so we will have pop music and that’s our fruit but we’ll put in spinach and K and will sometimes hide it in there you’re tricking people yeah well a little bit but at the same time it’s there and and so as the children drink our music they’re actually getting highlights and Snippets of classical music in there and hopefully that’s triggering some part of their psyche their brain into craving more nutrition and adding more holistic health to their playlist so honestly it comes with time the future of classical music if it is to have a future is a lot of what Symphonies are trying to do to stay alive where they’ll have pop music they’ll have guest artists they’ll have movies playing as they play film score which film score is the classical music of today I I know some people will disagree with me of that but I think that’s what it is and so I think you have to be creative about the way you disseminate it and invite people in but here’s my favorite way of all Victor Borg is a big hero of mine and do you know who that is skibby I don’t it’s okay you don’t he’s actually deceased for a while he was a Danish pianist one of the greatest pianists that ever lived and my dad would take me to the Symphony Hall when I was a kid and I was ADHD and so it was it was hard it was really hard like I’d get antsy and I remember one time I was doing this with my programs you know like a pirate my brother started to do it and I hit the program into his eye and it flew up into the air and hit the guy in the front of us and that was just kind of how it was going but I was looking around and I was kind of used to the people I saw there and then my dad took me to a Victor borga concert I looked around and I said most of these people I’ve never seen inside this classical music hall why and then he showed me Victor borga used comedy self-deprecation vulnerability teasing himself and the industry of classical music and the toxic perfectionism that exists in it I remember one time he plays this little Opera snippet and he’s like and then the chorus comes in and then they go off the stage and nobody knows why except for Mozart Mozart’s dead you know he would just kind of make fun of a little bit and everybody was laughing and then Skiby the most beautiful moment was I still remember it it was so powerful to me in the second half he turns off the comedy and turns off all of this stuff that everybody’s there to see and he says can I play you something and he plays a classical piece of music on the piano as pure as can be with no adulteration nothing altered and everybody is captivated and if I played them that without the context and the preparation that Victor Borger had put into it I think they would turn off their brain but the fact that he warmed them up to it and build a relationship with them broke the fourth wall connected with them in a meaningful way he could then connect with them with classical music so if we cannot connect with our audiences and always want to put ourselves on a pedestal I’m the performer you’re the audience classical music will die so my favorite way is to connect with the audience invite them in and I love to do it in piano guys we do it with self-deprecation a little dorkiness and a lot of humor yeah I think you’re totally right I know I’ve seen a lot of classical concerts piano and The Pianist walks on the stage doesn’t look at the audience plays a song gets up walks off the stage doesn’t look at the audience so I think you’re totally right the relationship is what creates the interest right and that’s Antiquated that’s the old way of classical music so if we want to keep it alive it has to have connection everybody knows that classical music will engage the brain and develop it far better than any pop song ever could so why aren’t we using it more because it’s hard I have to teach parents how to use the right kinds of classical music the right moments of classical music if I show you play this piece for your kids but only play the three minutes from this to this and ask them what they think the title of the piece is and it’s so fun to watch kids try to figure it out you know it’s so cool yeah it’s like okay it becomes an active then rather than passive dance give me an interpretive dance of this piece what my dad used to do with us we’d love that we would do pictures in an exhibition and we’d try to figure out what the title of the piece was based on the automat poetic elements in the music and it was so much fun or if I I say kids I want to play you the 1812 Overture and I’m going to play you the exciting part where the Cannons go off and we’re going to really enjoy that and that’s so cool can you imagine what this is like out on the battlefield and then I say can I play you two minutes of the first part of the piece and it’s a cello choir that I uses that nobody knows and it is mind blowingly beautiful and when I played for my kids after I prepped them with something that’s fun and engaging they sit there and listen and they’re captivated the other thing is you’re your family’s DJ and just remember that don’t let the radio do it because the radio is going to destroy your children’s Brains it’s the radio has no interest in your children’s wellbeing so you build the playlist if you do not have good playlists built you need to do that as a parent as soon as you can so that’s like a Sunday morning playlist what kind of mood do you want what about preschool like before they go to school what kind of playlist do you want I love a for king and country it has energy but there’s positive messages in it don’t just turn on Benson Boon and assume that you can trust him you can’t like the industry is just absolutely not trustworthy so you build the playlist you decide you’re the dj of your home but my recommendation is slip in classical music once in a while and even though your kids will be like what’s this just be like oh it’s just something I want to listen to so act like it’s what you want to listen to even though you’re for them and you’ll notice your kids will actually focus better on their homework my my recommendation is to turn on Baro music the Baroque Period is a nice fluid a little less volatile and more consistent energy to it and that has been shown to be the best for ADHD brains and focus by the way that’s Bach Vivaldi those composers so if you play that music in the background it doesn’t have to be very loud you actually will notice a mood change in your house and you’ll notice actually increased productivity and this is one of the coolest conversations this is like really fascinating to hear from you talking about a mission but hey Skippy started it this is honestly I could go forever this is super cool like I’m very fascinated by this studied and engrossed myself in because I know that we underestimate what’s happening in our children’s brains when they listen to music please never buy in to the fallacious argument that oh I don’t listen to lyrics You’re subconscious listening to lyrics okay so what’s the next AR do you know that 17 out of 20 songs are explicit in the top 20 Spotify songs that’s unacceptable that is unacceptable that our children are listening to explicit material now my kids will say they bleep it out when it’s on the radio and I say you bet they do but do they bleep out the messages because the messages are nothing you want your kids to live their life like it is everything dark I’m talking about the explicit songs it’s everything wrong about life put in the song yes could it be argued that it’s cathartic maybe but I don’t buy that it’s this weird direction that was started by God why is her name slipping my mind she always has the dark dreary eyes and the weird green hair and she’s help me out with it who is it Billy yes Billy eyelish so she started this trend where her music’s cool it’s got like this really dark kind of cool Moody vibe to it but it was like it was cool to be depressed yeah and upset and mad and not happy and I’m like this is not cool I don’t like this at all and so that was a trend and then Olivia Rodrigo started to pick it up and I was like I don’t like where this is going so just don’t trust the music industry don’t yeah composing is such an amazing world and sometimes it feels like some people have got it and it just comes to them naturally and for some people it’s like how could I sit down and write something original on the piano so I’m just curious to get a little inner look on what what you do in composing do the Tunes come to you do you sit down and say oh I’m going to mash a song with another song what song I do are you thinking in chords how does composition come to you okay lot of different directions we could take this answer first is I do believe that composition is nurture and nature I think both factor in I really do I think it’s undeniable that in the premortal Life some of us spent more time at it that’s the only explanation I can give I have a child that can make a ball sing you put a ball in his hand and he is Magic yeah but at an instrument he struggles he does and we do both anyway we insist on that in our house because Plato said the ultimate woman or man is the athlete musician and I believe that so we believe in limited agency in our home dictatorships in homes are allowed you know I mean it’s kind of convenient so but we give our CH we believe in agency we give our children two choices they can play an instrument and eat or not those are the two choices that they get but then I see my daughter and she without having even learned the piano sits down and she can play something by ear that comes out of nowhere so there is nature nurture now because there’s nature nurture everybody can learn to compose I don’t think anybody should think that there’s something against them that won’t allow them to but I think what’s underestimated is why do we think that we have to sit down and a Melody will come out of thin air and we’ll be able to command it to be on the page my recommendation is is start with arranging arranging is way more fun in the beginning take a piece of music that you love the melody it’s so sticky or a chord progression that you can’t get enough of and play with it have fun just don’t do it for success or failure push those labels out and just play and just play with it and that’s underestimated it’s an underestimated tool I want you to take a beetle song that’s really happy gol lucky I want to hold your hand and I want you to turn it into a funeral song make it something that would be dark and dreary or a horror movie soundtrack start playing around I know that sounds funny what one of the things we did Piano Guys once was we turned Eye of the Tiger into a lullaby that you could actually fall asleep to because we wanted to see what happens when you take something that’s so recognizable out of its original context and put it in a context you’d never expect to hear it and it it’s fun it’s playtime it just feels like playtime so that’s what I would recommend for people that want to get into composition is start with arranging just play around with it and then there was one aspect of your question that I didn’t address how do like original compositions come to you when you sit down to do something what’s your process okay so first of all there’s a principle that’s underestimated especially in today when it’s a chat GPT culture we want somebody else to do the work and to have the well that we can draw from and there’s I think that has its place but you have to understand you need material to create so it’s good to fill your mind let’s use like a sculptor A sculptor has to pick up a big block of something and begin chipping away at it he can’t just chip away at the air and expect the sculpture to appear so I actually really like listening to lots of different kinds of music and I can’t listen to it passively you know some people study to music I’m like that’s crazy so I do active listening where I’ll actually take notes and create a little Hall of Fame where I love little moments and songs where I’m like I don’t know how he did this modulation here how did he use this inversion to get me to want the next chord and I write it down and I sort of start collecting things and those things actually inform my compositional process it’s like being on a mission you can’t go on a mission having never read the scriptures and never prayed before and never had any things that were hard in your life because it’s a dry well that you can’t you need to draw from something the spirit’s got to work with something it can’t pull things very much out of the thin air so I that’s one of the things I’d recommend is a nice deep well of material number one and number two this is the hard one you have to understand that it does not come at your beck and call someday the creativity train will come into the station and other days it’ll pass right by you or never show up in the first place and that’s okay don’t expect consistency just keep at it you be consistent but don’t expect your creativity to be consistent you’ll have good days you’ll have bad days you’ve got to write a lot of garbage until you find the treasure and I think that’s what it’s about is you just got to get down just just get get into it and it’s so exciting if you just understand that you’re digging for gold you’re not expecting it to just be on the ground in front of you I love it we grew up in western music learning major scales all that stuff when you went to your mission in South Korea boom it’s a totally different type of music and I read your bio on your website and it’s like you’re creating cellos that have sounds like sitars and music that is not western music at all so I’m just curious to know your thoughts on world music and how Korean music influenced Your Love Of Music first of all World music is the most underestimated World Peace tool we have in terms of Intercultural and international relationships understanding appreciation and it is so much fun I’ll give you this analogy when I was growing up my dad was a meat and potatoes guy and he was the most brilliant man I ever knew in my life and he’s the one that taught me to love classical music he loved it so much in front of me I couldn’t help but pick up on it and that’s rule number one of the book that I will never finish so he was a meat and potatoes guy we would go to steakhouses and I’ll never forget when I tasted Thai food for the first time and it was this explosion of flavor like somebody had changed my life from black and white to Technicolor and I feel like when we listen to World music it adds so much color to our existing palet that we draw from that we paint the world with that we paint our thoughts with that we paint our understanding of others with naturally we all have this palette and I would love for people to add more color to that palette and one of the ways to do that is to seek appreciation and understanding of different cultures music and you’ll see that in The Piano Guys you’ll see all kinds of music in our music you’ll see Indian you’ll see African you’ll see Scottish and Celtic you’ll see South American because number one it would challenge me to get outside of my normal composition I hate to say this word but I feel like cannibalism a little bit like eating myself up I I can get out of that a little bit and explore literally explore the world and it started with Korea and here’s why on my mission and I actually served two missions I served one in Korea and one in New York I served half of mine in Korea half of M in New York but but what was interesting is I grew up in a meat and potatoes family that didn’t know much about the world when I got a Korea Mission call I had to look at the world map I didn’t know where Korea was I didn’t know what it was and that seems silly now but honestly back in 95 a lot of us didn’t know the Eastern culture as much so I go there instead of steak of potatoes I’m eating kimchi for breakfast I’m eating cold seaweed soup for breakfast and some of it was a little hard to get down but most of it was so good that all of the sudden I felt like I had entered literally a new world but also figuratively a new world in my life of understanding and not only my painting palette but coincidentally my actual palette and so as we instruct our palette we add paint to our palette is what I mean but then I started hearing the music now pop music today in Korea is the K-pop sort of thing we’re going to put that aside entirely that’s a different a different conversation but traditional Korean music predated European music by Thousand Years wow and when I wrap my head around that I’m like okay this was OG this was the OG music that existed on the earth and so I really tried to appreciate and understand why they actually used a simpler scale five notes yep right instead of the traditional 12 tone or eight notes seven notes eight notes and the chords that they would use and that actually opened my mind so Not only was I opening my palette adding paint to my palette but I was also adding compositional tools to my musical toolkit and that led me to explore World music and it actually caused me to explore the cello which had been traditionally bowed and P C once in a while I was like what else could this instrument do could I make it sound like a Chinese fiddle could I make it sound like AAR could I make it sound like things that it’s never sounded like before and I really do think that that observation you made skibby that it really did begin engrossed in the Eastern culture which would have never happened on a vacation or a trip there but happened as a result of going all in the culture of Korea That’s So Co missions are amazing they just change things huh yeah I love it point about that is great because you can’t learn that on a vacation you have to be exactly what you said totally immersed for an extended period of time and that could be language that could be culture that could be music in this case but that’s why it’s so different from any other experience that’s available to most people any time in their lives it’s really pretty cool this story would illustrate the point when I’m on a vacation when I’m on a trip even if I go for a month or two this would never happen I’m on my mission and I’m walking around what is a very poor neighborhood Ood and I hadn’t experienced poverty I grew up in Utah for heaven’s sakes like we don’t have poverty like other countries have poverty and I remember I walk into this home it’s dirt floor it’s got a tin roof a corrugated tin roof and I’m talking to this guy he’s 4 foot five we’re sitting on the ground he’s offering me the food what little he has and I will never forget the conversation I have with him about how how grateful he is for what he has in his life and I dug into that I said you got to I don’t understand you got to tell me how this how and to appreciate someone’s real gratitude for the absolute basic things of life and a God who loves him how could I have experienced that otherwise how could I have experienced that otherwise and that informed my life in such a profound way that I could go deeper with my own personal gratitude as a result of seeing somebody sitting on a dirt floor talking face to face with somebody who opened his heart up to me and his home and his food and pro to me the Divine principle of gratitude all starts with being grateful for God and the Very fundamental things that he gives us and I mean where else am I going to get that yeah nowhere honestly I don’t know that you can yeah God us all in tears man it’s brought memories up to you too and this you know those of you who are listening don’t focus on how hard it’s going to be don’t focus on that focus on your transformation and how incredible it’s going to be for you to experience transformational things that will level you up so profoundly think about it in terms of a simple video game and that’s a very simplistic way to explain it but but think about discovering a new land and adding things to Your Arsenal and your avatar to the point where you are leveled up and you can have greater capacity to do more things in your life a greater love for people deeper relationships and greater desires to do good let me tell you it is so wonderful to serve God and to serve others because it forces out your useless cares and the things that don’t matter the small potatoes in your life it forces them out to the point where you no longer desire to do things that won’t do you or anybody else good you begin to desire good continually and that is such a powerful thing in life because it will bring you incredible joy and it will bring you incredible fulfillment that you could not experience without giving yourself to something that is higher than you are at a time that is the most selfish point of your existence don’t feel like I’m insulting you that’s just we all go through that 18 19 years old it is the most selfish point of life why would God ask us to go on a mission at that point because he knows all things and he knows that if we’re out serving others we won’t be caught up in our own problems in our own head to the point where we actually trip over our own feet face plant and maybe never recover so you’ve mentioned a lot of things that you feel like your mission was helpful for failure psychological flexibility greater desires to do good gratitude is there anything else that comes to mind that you feel like influenced your life that you picked up from your mission yes number one thing number one thing is building positive relationships with people you work with it is so underestimated and I think that’s the number one thing I learned from my mission other than personal testimony growth was learning to work with people that were difficult to work with or that weren compatible with you and you may say well I don’t want to go do that yes you do yes you do because you can’t always pick who you work with and often you’re with somebody that maybe in a marriage or in a Business Partnership that is different than you are and how are you going to find Middle Ground that’s better and not insist on your way or be just simply a limp fish when they want their way how do you do that what better place to practice when you’re in the service of others and when you and a companion are working towards something that’s higher than yourself and this is what I’ve learned whatever relationships you’re in if your aim together is to go after something that’s bigger than yourselves you will find that the attrition that occurs naturally in a relationship will polish you instead of demolish you let me explain what I mean if two rocks are being rubbed together this is something called attrition attrition is when something is worn down as a result of rubbing up against something else and two things can happen of attrition a rock can be polished in other words the rough edges can be worked off or there’s so much of it that the rock actually eventually pulverizes and demolishes and what I’ve discovered is the difference between polish and demolish is the higher cause is something that’s bigger than yourself so my wife and I our higher cause is to build an eternal family yeah and that is why our attrition between the two of us is polishing and not demolishing when you’re on a mission the two of you can get in simple spats about the pettiest things but if you focus on the unifying principle of helping others come under Christ the attrition between the two of you can be polishing instead of demolishing that is a wonderful principle to learn that’s not being taught to you in school and honestly your siblings don’t count yes they help a little bit but they’re family and so they’re always going to be around and so we don’t try as hard sometimes in those situations and maybe we push them away when we don’t feel like it’s like I don’t want to deal with you right now well on a mission you can’t do that good luck yeah yeah you can’t you’re kind of stuck and I got tell you it’s awesome it’s not awesome during it but it is so awesome in retrospect and what it’s taught me The Piano Guys partnership we have four of us John and I are the performers and then we have a music producer and a video producer we are so different and so the same at the same time but we have had multiple moments at least a half dozen that I can think of where we would have broken up as a band had it not been for us understanding this principle of unifying each other to a higher princip in a cause and using prayer to unify ourselves to forgive each other the principle of forgiveness the principle of understanding and nonjudgmentalism all of these gospel principles loving them as much as you love yourself all of these principles that we teach you get to practice them on your mission with somebody else that you didn’t choose and that kind of bugs you so what are you gonna do I gotta tell you man it’s awesome I have a better marriage as a result of my mission I had some tough Companions and you know what they might be on podcast right now saying I was a tough companion and that’s okay this is the nature of it right yeah it is it’s just the nature of it don’t be afraid of it man go after it and I love this when we talk about in the doctrine of covenants there’s a word we miss it’s in section 18 you’ve heard the scripture before but it says if you should bring one Soul unto me how great shall be your joy if you bring one Soul unto me right and often we think that that’s someone we’re going to go out and find on the street and convert oh right yeah that’s true but I think it’s missing the point of the scripture first that one Soul first is you th% then it’s your companion and I’ll tell you a story right after I finish this principle but here’s the word we missed in the Scripture it says how great shall be your joy in heaven but then we don’t say the rest of it how great shall be your joy in heaven with him and on my mission my mission president came to me and he said I’m going to give you a companion and you’re his last chance if he can’t cut it with you I’m sending him home and I was like yeah I got this like hero I’m going to go in I’m going to fix him it’s going to be so awesome I’m going to teach him the gospel and we’re going to get along and oh it was a disaster I went in there self-righteously thinking I was going to fix him everything that could go wrong went wrong we didn’t get any work done we were butting heads we were upset at each other all the time he was purposefully doing things that he knew would bug me just because I was trying to fix him I didn’t understand that principle then I do now so I go to the mission president he says how’s it it gone I say you send him home I you should I think you should send him home he is not doing me a service he’s ruining my mission he’s ruining it for other people in our district he’s not doing any of the work send him home and Sam I will never forget when the mission president looked at me and said so disappointed he loved me and he was so loving but he was so disappointed and he said Steve or sorry he said Elder Nelson he said Elder Nelson that’s the wrong answer if I send him home now we’ll lose him forever go back and start again and so I went back humbled sufficiently and I got on my knees oh dudes when you’re listening to this when you’re on your mission man I hope you have experiences like this it is so so informative and so Transcendent what it can do for us I got on my knees and I said heavenly father I’m sorry will you please forgive me can I start over what do I do how do I do this and the impression came it just said be his friend so I started over the next day and I apologized to him I started over I went up on the roof he would go up on the roof and practice nunchucks just to bug me you know so I went up on the roof and I’m like hey will you teach me that he’s like what are you getting at what are you trying to do I’m like no I really want to learn so he taught I learn nunchucks on my mission and we became really good friends and he stayed his whole mission after my mission I met him in Canada where I was playing a concert and he came with his family and it was after the show and there is his wife and his children all sealed in the temple glowing with light and he gives me a hug and he says Elder Nelson still called me Ellen Nelson thank you for not giving up on me and I said Elder I did I gave up on you but the Lord did not give up on either one of us and that was the principle I learned that God loved him just as much as he loved me and I was self-righteously trying to do what I thought was the right thing when really I should have backed up and just said how great will my joy be in heaven when I’m with him in heaven if we do this right so relationships your relationships are going to be the most important thing to you in your life you don’t know that now but you will know that eventually the older you get the more you recognize how little worth money is how little worth career ends up being how little where so many things that you’re worried about right now are and how vitally important and eternally significant relationships are what better place than on a mission to develop deeper relationships better understanding more compassion less judgment and a road to creating more meaningful viable wonderful propitious relationships in your life speaking of that your son got his call to Korea so what did that do to your relationship with him this is a cool story so I got N9 months into Korea so a year into my mission basically after the MTC and I’m in Korea and I get really sick they think it’s cancer and so they pull me home and I spend three weeks as a companion to my dad which is another story that I I would love to tell on this podcast eventually which would be really cool how that all panned out because I was a real pill when I was a kid I was so hard because I couldn’t figure out what this ADHD thing was so my dad saw this transformation in me that the mission caused that I was actually caring and understanding and aware of people around me instead of moody moody moody I was so moody before my mission and the spirit helped me regulate that and empowered me to channel it rather than let it be you know acting upon me I was acting instead of being acted upon second Nephi chapter 2 so um my dad’s seen this transformation in me and we both pray and fast that I’m going to go back to Korea I’m going to get well again and go back to Korea and I feel like that prayer was a yes I really get a confirmation I feel like what was a confirmation and then I get recalled to New York when they figured out that it wasn’t cancer and I could go back out it was still painful but I could work it out and I was like what was that didn’t make any sense and I I kind of forgot about it so then later on I’m trying this Piano Guys thing and I’m missing a lot of significant events in my son’s life Eli my firstborn I want so badly to have a deep you want this with your son right your daughter your son you have a firstborn daughter or son daughter okay with your firstborn daughter don’t you want you yearn for a deep relationship with her oh yeah more than anything right yeah and Milestones that you can hold on to Red Sea moments between the two of you you can relate to right that connect you well I had missed a lot of those because I was on tour so much and the demand of my career was overextending me so I prayed heavenly father and I said and this is what I learned on my mission like if you have problems you don’t just try to figure them out on your own you pray to Heavenly Father and then you work work them out with him as he’s walking with you and he’ll give you ideas and you go after them courageously but you trust that he’s got ideas that are better than yours and you work together on it so I said heavenly father will you help me fill in the missing pieces of my relationship with my son and I kind of forgotten about that prayer you ever say a prayer you know you utter so sincerely but then life goes on and you kind of forget you said it so the minute my son read aloud the words Korea Mission I fell to the floor because I was so overcome I would have never assumed that could be possible Korea is so few missionaries three missions with so few missionaries I don’t know was it like 300 total of the 60,000 missionaries something like that and while I was on the ground I saw in my mind’s eye this vision of little puzzle pieces falling from the sky and filling the holes of that puzzle in my relationship with my son and this impression that where God said I had this figured out all along don’t you worry just trust me I’ve got you and then I realized and recognized that I had said that prayer and then that was an answer to prayer but there’s more and this is the elder Scott principle whenever he would get Revelation or feel something from God he would ask is there more and it’s such a cool question to ask from God because almost every time I ask that there is more and it’s even better it’s even cooler and I do that in my scripture study I do that when I get impressions I do that when I feel like I get a good idea is there more and in this case I’m preparing to speak at the MTC while my son is there I’m going to surprise him they’ve asked me to come speak and so they’re going to put him on the front row and I’m going to surprise him it’s going to be so fun and it was really fun and as I’m preparing the spirit something an impression whatever you know the spirit speaks to you according to your language however you say don’t think that you have to have it like I have it don’t feel like well I’ve never felt that before that’s okay you work with God and the spirit in your own way I promise if you look for it you’ll figure it out but in my way often it comes as these little ideas and Impressions and thoughts and feelings all almost at once simultaneously it’s sort of like a grand Symphony coming together and Melody sort of intertwining and all of the sudden I see the resolution of harmonic progression because that’s my language is music so I’m preparing for the MTC and the spirit impresses upon me something like do you remember that prayer when you prayed and fasted that you could finish your mission in Korea and I was like yeah thanks for that that prayer that never got answered the spirit said well your son is going to finish it for you and I recognized at that point that it’s a way better answer to that prayer than if I would have finished it because now that my son can finish it for me how much more are we eternally going to be intertwined and connected as father son as a result of him finishing the mission I never finished and that’s something that I will never ever be grateful enough to God for orchestrating is such a beautiful insightful way that was prepared far before I could have ever imagined it to be prepared so my message to you is that God has things lined up for you you listeners that if you show up for him the things he has lined up for you are unimaginably epic and prodigious and cool and amazing and awesome I promise you that as you turn your life over to him show up for him it’s incredible you will not believe the mountains he will help you climb and the views that you will have from the tops of those mountains that’s an incredible way to end I’ve listened to music that You’ played for a long time I remember listening to it on my mission but man the passion that you show for your music for your mission to me it’s so cool and I think you’re an incredible person so thank you of you for taking time and being so sincere and telling your experience you know I love it so thank you so much my pleasure and I’m all in on this I think it’s a wonderful concept and I really do think that we often try to decouple spiritual and temporal and we are in error when we do that I think spiritual and temporal are inseparably connected yeah and so any spiritual gain on a mission any temporal gain are all connected when we live the rest of our life after our mission we can constantly Trace spiritual and temporal successes to our mission so yeah I love this concept and I love the mission and what you’re trying to accomplish here in convincing young men in particular but young men and young women that this is something that they should not push aside without deep sincere wonderful powerful thought and prayer and my plea to you is do it do it and just show up show up start preparing now and it could be just in small and simple ways but get out there and I promise you that every day after your mission no matter where you go no matter what happens on your mission every day after your mission you will recognize little packets that God will drop that will tie you back to the experience you had on your mission and will help you to be more emotionally well desire to do good and more successful in your life I promise you more successful in your relationships and valuing the things that matter most and you will have greater capacity to experience joy in your life and I promise you that Steve you’re the man thanks Sam this is [Music] great got to love it man what a guy thanks again to Steve for his time and thanks to my sister Skiby for her musical insights if you like this episode please share it with a friend and stick around for more episodes in the future thanks [Music] he [Music]

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