BY TREVOR MIRES
Remote Possibilities EDUCATION
The self-isolation we are all going through presents so many challenges. For us musicians, it can feel like someone has pressed the ‘pause’ button on our creative and professional lives. However, it is clear that musicians around the world continue to be tenacious and positive in their search for ways they can present their art, hone their craft, and also share their knowledge and experience with others. I have been teaching a small number of students for a few years now. I want to make sure that the fruits of their hard work continue to develop during this period of self-isolation. Since ‘physical’ one-to-one lessons are now out of the question, the obvious alternative to this is to meet up on the internet, via a video conference application of some kind. I quickly found out that my students use a variety of different hardware devices (Macs, PC’s, iPhones, android, and such). Therefore, I needed to find a platform that was accessible to all of my students rather than attempt to do FaceTime lessons for three students, Skype for two of them, and so on. Actually, my first thought was to try using Skype, as this was the last video conferencing app I’d used previously. However, I couldn’t remember my password and the process of trying to reset it seemed to be taking longer than it does to watch the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy (and was a lot less enjoyable). After posting a request for advice on Facebook (I also tried Friends Reunited, Myspace, and videosofcatsdoingthefunniestthings.com, but none of these seemed to be of any help), a number of people suggested using something called Zoom. I checked it out. The basic usage package is free. This package puts a 40-minute time limit on calls involving three or more people, however, as I am teaching one-to-one, this is no problem for me. 26
After reading several bits of advice on configuring the Zoom application for better video clarity, clearer microphone reception, and lower latency levels, I quickly concluded that the smartest move would be to just turn it on and do a trombone lesson. This plan of attack has consistently served me badly in the past, including highlights such as attempting to construct a child’s trampoline without the instructions (7 hours, one broken finger), and the assembly of a bunk bed using a YouTube instructional video for a completely different bunk bed (13 hours … the result looking like something out of one of Picasso’s nightmares). On this occasion, I was lucky. There are a number of ways to set up a ‘meeting’ on the app. The way I do it is to click on ‘host a meeting’, and then ‘invite’. From here, I select the option to send an invite via email to my students. I do this around 15 minutes before each lesson. On the first occasion, everything seemed to work great, given the circumstances. I could hear my student crystal clear, and the student could hear me (unfortunately for them). Latency (the level of delay to an audio signal being delivered to the intended listener) was pretty low and the lesson was able to flow without too many hiccups.