Just how effective are online lessons

[JCBone]

Iv'e been doing online lessons for the better part of this year. Ivery skeptical of how effective they are since almost every piece of critisicm starts with "I don't know if this is a problem with the audio or it's you". But anyway, what are your experiences?

[WilliamLang]

it's better than nothing, but nowhere near as good as being in the same room

[Bassclefstef]

So I've been teaching trombone lessons online since March 2020, and I've also been taking bass guitar lessons online since about June 2020 (I started taking bass lessons in-person in January 2020, took a break when the pandemic hit, and then moved to doing lessons online). For reference, most of my lessons are through an iPad, using either Zoom or Facetime. I'm not running any audio equipment more specialized that that- sometimes I'll hook my Zoom H6 up tot the ipad and use it as an audio interface, but sometimes I don't bother, and I can't expect middle school and high school kids to invest in better microphones or audio gear. Most of my students are either middle or high school level, with a couple older adult students as well. A couple of them are private students, the rest are through an arts magnet school where my wife and I teach.

What've found so far as a teacher is that online lessons tend to emphasize whatever a student's working habit are. The kids that I've got that are gung-ho, hard workers, are doing great- they're keeping up with their assignments, making progress, and getting a lot done in their lesson times. The couple students I have (one in particular) who aren't as interested in practicing I think are falling further and further behind.

Dealing with the time delay and internet glitches are the biggest frustration, like you mentioned, JCBone. For example, just the other day, I had someone working on the Jacob concerto with me, and her 8th notes through the allegro passages were totally inconsistent, so I had her turn on a metronome over on her end of the screen, and the 8th note subdivisions out of the metronome literally sounded like they were being swung, so we knew it was an internet issue. Sending recordings back and forth between student and teacher can be a great help to deal with that.

Pitch seems to sag across internet connections and through video apps, usually by 5 to 7 cents, and it will also tend to flatten out any dynamics that they're playing with - again, I'm really hesitant to insist that middle or high school kids invest in better audio gear that just using their phone or tablet, but I'd think that would be a different story in college.

[Doug Elliott]

I have taught lots of lessons online, both working on chops and musical coaching/audition prep lessons. Maybe I'm just used to low fidelity sound, but as long as the internet connection is reasonably good I have no trouble hearing subtleties necessary to teach effectively. Originally I was very skeptical, but I actually prefer it now.

[Bach5G]

I like being able to record and replay my online lessons.

[BurckhardtS]

A lot of it depends on the teacher too. I've actually done online lessons with Doug and my private teacher in college when he was doing gigs, and they were absolutely successful. I've had teachers who flounder, don't really want to learn the tech where I've felt my time was wasted for online lessons. So your mileage might vary.

[Burgerbob]

What've found so far as a teacher is that online lessons tend to emphasize whatever a student's working habit are. The kids that I've got that are gung-ho, hard workers, are doing great- they're keeping up with their assignments, making progress, and getting a lot done in their lesson times. The couple students I have (one in particular) who aren't as interested in practicing I think are falling further and further behind.

This has been my finding as well. I've had a student make all-state, and another just fall off the radar completely.

You do have to be forgiving with internet issues. I'm pretty patient so it doesn't bother me, but sometimes things will drop out for a few seconds, or time will stretch, etc.

Maybe I'm just used to low fidelity sound, but as long as the internet connection is reasonably good I have no trouble hearing subtleties necessary to teach effectively.

I've found this as well. Do I hear as much as I would in person? No, but as long as it's not just sawtooth waveform compressed awfulness, I can pretty much tell what the student is doing on the other side.


Just like it was in the before times, most of lessons is up to the student, not the teacher- putting in the time between lessons so it's all worth it.

[Elow]

I had a lesson with aidan working on mostly fundamentals when i was just starting out on bass and another lesson with a professor working out musical aspects for an all state audition. Maybe aidan was a better teacher but i felt like i didn’t get nearly as much out of the other lesson.

[andym]

Note that zoom has a variety of audio settings that are useful for music. You can turn off or decrease echo cancellation (better use headphones), automatic gain, noise cancellation, and turn up the quality of the sound transmission. That last bit will use more bandwidth. Some of this is part of what they call original sound. None of this will change latency issues. For more stable latency, a wired Ethernet connection is better. But that just makes it more stable and does little to reduce it.

These settings can make a big difference. My wife has been doing a songwriting class and with the default settings the noise cancellation would cancel people’s guitars while they were singing. It’s pretty hard to comment on someone’s chord progressions if you can’t hear them.

[Neo Bri]

It depends so much according to the student, as in in-person lessons. I have a lot of students and all of them are online. I'd say that for fundamentals, chops, etc. they can be nearly as effective as face-to-face. The trouble as stated before can be sound quality, etc.

My setup is pretty sophisticated and I spent a great deal of time at the beginning (months, in fact) dialing in my capabilities. In some ways I can do more with students than live. For example, screen-sharing, immediate delivery of PDFs, etc. is all very easy. My sound setup works well. But of course most students don't have a sophisticated setup at all, so we work with what we have.

I try to make up for the deficits with value and function other ways. It's been working well, and surprisingly my studio is busier these days than before.

[BigBadandBass]

Using other resources in my online lessons have been immensely helpful. Sending a PDF of the music you're working on, recordings from your practice session have gone a long way for me. I had a lesson where I sent ahead what I wanted to work on we worked through it together by me reading off my laptop on the teachers copy that he was using his mouse to point things out on. Also being able at least for my lessons, singing has become immensely helpful, especially when we have different versions of the same tune and need a starting place

[BigBadandBass]

The lessons are meh, not the best, but def not the worst, and maybe that's because now there's more accountability when you need to send in audio prior. No more cramming for a lesson Wednesday morning on Tuesday night

[Arrowhead]

Like someone already stated, online lessons are better than nothing. At the same time. online lessons do have their list of contradictions....

Sometimes you can hear everything in the room, but the quality of feedback sometimes just allows a "surface level" of hearing the other person. The depth of sound isn't fully present.

The obvious delay. Sometimes I would play something and the other person would say "you didn't play that"- huh?!??

And this is more about teaching approach itself, and not so much about audio...
-Sometimes it seems like the person is working from a script. It's like they plan what they're going to say ahead of time, regardless of whether you play something or not.
-Too much talking (student AND teacher). "Back when I played with Jerry Lewis at the Copa...." Nobody cares. Save it for after the lesson or some other time.

[WilliamLang]

20% of the job is playing the trombone well enough most of the time. like every lesson is easy if you just address playing in time, in tune, with a decent tone. you barely need a teacher for that if you can record yourself and listen honestly, once the basic technique is sorted out. there's enough recordings and scores out there that are easily accesible for the curious student to study to learn how most music goes as well.

the other 80% is stuff you learn through experience, or listening to teachers talk and gleaning what's useful. some people ramble, that's true, but seperating the wheat from the chaff is also a useful life lesson.