YouTube has brought a new realm to music lessons. While it is easy to access and plentiful, it will never replace private lessons with an in-person teacher. Why? While social media does have an interactive aspect, leaving comments and questions on a YouTube video will not necessarily make it fully interactive.
When I was growing up, there were “how to play guitar” videos on VHS. Years later, the same videos appeared on DVD. Now we have YouTube, which is just today’s VHS. Much like real life, there are some fantastic and some awful teachers on YouTube, so choosing which to love and subscribe to is a bit of a time-consuming chore. So how does a teacher provide online lessons that are more interactive than YouTube?
Enter: The video chat online lessons.
Teachers started turning to platforms like Skype, FaceTime, Zoom, WebEx, etc. to offer online lessons. This started a few years ago. Perhaps it would have started sooner, but the technology had to advance enough to avoid latency issues and other audio/video quirks. Today, video chat has come a very long way. Not all instruments are suited for online lessons, but guitarists seem to be embracing it the most!
With COVID-19 shackling music schools and stores, more and more private teachers are now online teaching remotely. Is there a future in online lessons? Perhaps, but to do that you have to match every aspect of an in-person experience. That’s plenty challenging on its own!
HERE’S ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW TO TEACH MUSIC ONLINE.
(Each instrument is different, so tweak accordingly. I’ll be writing from a guitarist’s perspective.)
Payment.
This is the easier thing to get around today. Between PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, Zelle, etc. there are plenty of ways to pay digitally without meeting with your teacher in person.
Online lessons Tech.
You and your students will require an internet connection, microphone, and camera. When it comes to internet connections, the faster the better. You want to make sure your network has low traffic, full bars, and high speeds. If you have a 500mb connection, that’s great but not if you have 1.5 bars and 30 devices in the house all running on the same network. Too much traffic can lead to problems with even the best mics and cameras so be sure to keep your connection at top levels and let your students know, too. Even if your connection is great, theirs can still affect the result.
Most devices have mics and cameras built-in, but that doesn’t mean they are all equal.
I use an iPad Pro and many of my students use iPads and iPhones. The sound quality is decent, but sometimes it can be hard to hear students. They have to play rather loudly, and even with the best computer microphones, the audio quality can still be a bit dodgy. The best audio quality will always come from a direct connection using some sort of USB interface, which unfortunately isn’t something students tend to already have handy. Asking them to invest in something simple like iRig HD (or similar) might be a good way to go.
Even the best cameras suffer if the lighting isn’t at it’s best. The best lighting is natural light. Sunlight or even those bright LED daylight bulbs can provide great lighting and clarity. Remember, a digital camera with low light doesn’t just look darker like it did back in the days of film! Low light today means gritty, pixelated images as your camera struggles to make out the various shapes that are in front of it. You and the student should have plenty of light.
Which is best? Smartphone? Tablet? Computer? I believe that with the tech that’s out there today just about any of these devices (assuming they are new) will suffice. However, the screen size will drastically change the next stage in teaching online.
Visibility!
Remember, you’re not in a studio anymore. You and the student are looking at each other through flat little screens. The larger the screen, the more natural the experience. I have hooked up my Mac (Mini) to my 50-inch 4K TV and felt like my students were practically in the room. Very cool! Of course, the lower quality video streaming looked more gritty on the big screen, but the better ones were dreamy. They were virtually life-size! For this reason, a lesson over a phone is a bit moot. Your teacher will appear to be just a bit smaller than a Smurf and looking at his/her fingers will be less effective.
What’s the best video app for online lessons?
FaceTime
Pros:
-Audio/video quality is great.
Cons:
-No tools.
Skype:
Pros:
-Screen sharing and file sharing, as well as chat.
Cons:
-Audio/video quality is dodgy.
-Can connect partiality requiring a reconnect, or it can disconnect altogether.
-Microsoft neglects to update the app time and again.
Zoom:
Pros:
-Great audio/video quality.
-Lots of tools including file sharing, screen sharing, whiteboarding, and more.
-Multiple camera use! (Great for multi-angle lessons.)
Cons:
-Connectivity is a bit tricky. You can access via invitation but connecting generally involves a long “room number” followed by a password. Both are arbitrarily conjured up by Zoom.
There are others out there like WebEx and Google Hangouts. At some point, while using Skype I decided to incorporate whiteboard use by utilizing Google’s Jamboard. This failed because Jamboard has an absurd age restriction which prevents most of your average age students from using it. Whichever platform you prefer for audio/video conferencing, consider one with lots of tools or you’ll find yourself fishing through your app markets for other apps to use alongside your conferencing app.
What about books?
For generations, students have worked in books. Whether it’s a method book, reading book, theory book, exercise book, songbook, or manuscript book students will always have something on their music stand to work from. They should, too! Online lessons should be organized and books provide exactly that. Now you’ve entered into online lessons… how do you provide books?
Well, it’s possible to suggest a book and have the student order it online. From there you can both have the same copies and just follow along with each other. I have a series of method books that I wrote so my students will download them from my online store and use them in either digital or physical copies (printed themselves at home.) If you’re conferencing software doesn’t provide file-sharing you might want to consider cloud storage like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc. This way you can keep your PDFs and JPGs that you plan on teaching with handy for upload to the student at any time via a link. Of course, you’ll also need a way to send them the link – so be sure to have some method of chat app/email handy.
With that said, it’s not a bad idea to ask students to make sure they have a functioning printer in the house. My books are Apple Books compatible, so I’ve encouraged students using iPads to download the Books app and open my books via the app. The app will retain the most recently read page (like a bookmark in a physical book) and it also allows for hyper-jumps to any page via the table of contents. Just tap a song in the list and the book flips open right to that page. Perfection!
What about physical interaction? When we’re in the room with students we can point at the book, annotate (write, draw, highlight, etc.), and guide students by literally reading over their shoulders. We can’t do that over the video, can we?
For this reason, PDF copies of music are ideal from the teacher’s side. Using some form of screen sharing (built into your conferencing app or perhaps another third party app) you can pull up the song right onto the student’s screen. From there you can use your mouse to highlight and point at things on the page.
Want to step up your game? Those of us with iPads and Apple Pencils (or Microsoft Surface tablets and pens if you prefer) can write directly on the screen. I love this feature on my iPad! Using pencils, pens, and highlighters all in an assortment of colors I can write all over the screen (temporarily) and help the student improve on his/her reading skills. This can also aid in reading along when you’re dissecting a song.
There’s a great app called Flexil which has a neat feature that temporarily circles items on the page. First, you circle a musical phrase on the phone. If you keep your stylus on the screen the circle will remain, if you remove the stylus the circle fades naturally after a few seconds. Great stuff!
“When I teach sometimes I have to physically maneuver a student’s fingers and hand position to help them understand the best way to hold their instrument. I can’t do this over video!” I’ve heard this, and I’ve thought this myself. Not being able to physically interact with students, particularly younger ones, can be a real drag. We need that human interaction and for this reason alone I don’t believe video lessons will ever replace real in-person experience.
Still, where there’s a will there’s a way and if both teacher and student try to work together you can certainly get from A to B. If you need a little help with a very young student, ask a parent to be present during their lesson. Guide the parent through the steps and have them help their child out. Are parents too busy? Well, I’m a busy parent but sometimes you have to find time for your kids! It’s a half-hour lesson, and you’re paying for it. Make it work! Tell those parents to make it an opportunity to spend time with their kids. You can even jest and say, “Hey, it’s like getting a free lesson yourself!”
The last thing is the hardest to deal with over video conferencing:
Playing together!
With even a smidge go latency you can find playing together impossible. What is the latency? Simply put, it’s a small lag in timing which means you hear what the other person said or played a nanosecond too late. The bigger the lag, the more painful the experience. Now let’s say you have a great connection with powerful software and do not notice any lag. Well, there might be hope but there’s another factor.
Many times while using Skype I’ve noticed that the app cannot playback sound while recording it. In other words, one of you will be playing over the other drowning them out. I noticed it immediately when I demonstrated something and then my student immediately copied it but I didn’t hear the first few notes. Skype was flipping back and forth between listening and playing. Whatever the tech reason for this, duets are nearly impossible.
We all need to jam with our students at some point in the game, so this can be a real deal-breaker when comparing video lessons with the real deal. However, don’t fret (yes, I went there) and remember duets are not entirely dead in the water. Let’s say the duet is a simple one in a beginner method book. The song has both guitar 1 and guitar 2 on the page and you’re supposed to play together. Skype (or whichever app) won’t provide that experience.
What do you do? Well, can the student play either part? Usually. Most method books make both parts playable so the student can learn both and trade-off with their teacher (or anyone else they wish to play with.) The workaround for the play-along nightmare that is online lessons? Ask them to record themselves! Yup. Piece of cake. They can use anything from a simple recording app to GarageBand or something similar. I grew up on cassettes and had to make that work!
These digital apps are a dream in my opinion. Ask the student to play either part 1 or part 2 and record it. Then they can play along with themselves. A great perk to this is that by recording themselves the student cannot make a single mistake. Even the smallest mistake will be permanent on the recording and thus throw off the duet.
This is a great motivator to learn how to play as best as we can, right? Perfection! I hate the phrase, “practice makes perfect.” No one is perfect, and the arts are at their best when there is a little imperfection in there. With that said, tell your students “practice makes progress” and encourage them to use this recording technique not only for their duets but as a general practice tool. This and a metronome can greatly improve a student’s playing.
Final thoughts.
Again, I don’t believe online lessons can and will replace a real experience, especially if you want to gain that true student-teacher relationship that can be achieved. I’ve been teaching for almost 25 years, all ages and levels. When you bond with your student it’s gold! BUT, if you’re going to take the plunge and teach online make the very best of it. Don’t go in halfway, dive into the deep end, and use all of the tools you can. Make the experience for the student as productive and effective as possible.
Tools for Online Lessons:
-Great high-speed web connection.
-A device with a great camera and mic (or USB input device!)
-Great lighting!
-Top-notch video conferencing software.
-Software (built-in or third-party) for screen sharing, file sharing, whiteboard/annotation, etc.
-A stylus.
-Lots of PDFs and JPGs saved somewhere for quick access.
I’m holding down 25 students of my usual average of 40 a week. This week is Teacher Appreciate Week. Believe me, in troubled times like these we appreciate the appreciation! Thank you to all of the students who have toughed this out and made it work video web! You guys rock!!
More from Niko Lalangas @ The Blogging Musician