How To Teach Music Online

3/17/2023

Teaching music online may not sound like the easiest thing to do. How do you engage students? How do you help them solve problems when you’re not there with them? How can you show them examples when you’re limited to a tiny little screen? While there are some obstacles that we may encounter, there are a variety of benefits that actually make it so that you are able to create meaningful connections with students.

Now, sometimes, it is not an easy feat as we deal with a variety of different students. There are some students that take online music classes because they were ‘voluntold’. However, there are students who are genuinely interested and if you are able to create a meaningful connection, they will stay with you.

Cultivate meaningful relationships with your students. Throughout the course of the pandemic, I was able to create sustaining relationships with my students by genuinely engaging with them by simply seeing how they are and being able to connect that with you. By delving straight into the nuts and bolts of what you’re supposed to teach that day won’t help create that connection. While some of us have different approaches to teaching, regardless, an effective teacher, be it online or in-person, needs to care about their students.
Make sure to invest in reliable equipment that will allow you to teach music online. A lot of time, people get turned off about online teaching, in part, because they are under the impression that they must spend loads of money on the most high-tech equipment. The most important thing is making sure that the equipment works for you. Here are a couple of things to consider:
1. Microphone. If you don’t have the best audio quality, it makes it difficult for students to be able to understand what you’re saying. What I have found useful is being able to purchase a microphone that allows students to hear me audibly. Depending on what your student has, as it is important for them to be clearly audible, I usually recommend the same for them: the USB Microphone, FIFINE Metal Condenser Recording Microphone for Laptop MAC or Windows Cardioid Studio Recording Vocals, Voice Overs, Streaming Broadcast and YouTube Videos - K669B.
2. Making sure you adapt the settings of your Zoom account according to your instrument. For the clarinet, it’s always useful to have the input volume between 8 and 9. Depending on where you are, it is always recommended to make sure you also adjust the settings under ‘suppress background noise’. Try not to set it to ‘auto’ as sometimes Zoom can interpret the instrument's sounds as noise. Under the setting ‘Music and Professional Audio’ make sure that you have ‘high-fidelity music mode’, ‘echo cancellation’, and ‘stereo audio’ checked off. Make sure that your students also have the same settings as you so that way you would be able to hear them also. Now, these input and output would have to be adjusted to accommodate your instrument.
Make sure that you are comfortable with the technology before using it. Sometimes, it can be overwhelming if you’re new to these types of technologies. That said, there are a great number of tutorials and online resources that are worth exploring that walk you through the process. Now, don’t worry if it takes you time to learn this as it is important to learn it well and that you look comfortable using the technology in a live setting. While younger students can be a little more forgiving to teachers who struggle using these types of technologies, it is actually really unproductive in these types of learning spaces no matter how old the students are. That’s why it never hurts calling a friend to do a test run of a meeting to make sure that everything is set before you take the big leap to online teaching.
Take advantage of the wonderful resources we have online. When I was a student learning music, I remember being introduced to an online program called ‘MacGamut’ to help with my ear-training. This was back when we had CD discs and I kept having to buy new copies as I kept getting mine scratched. Nowadays, we have dozens of online applications and free online programs that are useful in teaching music online. Here are a couple I’d recommend:
1. Tonedear provides a lot of practice exercises that allow you to help develop your inner-ear through the use of intervals, chords, scales, and chord progressions. There’s even exercises for students who have perfect pitch. There is also a program for teachers that allows you to be able to develop your own assignments and view student scores. While this is useful, I usually have my students take screenshots of their work and send them to me.
2. Bemuse is also an online, web-based rhythm game that makes it so you can play the game by pressing the correct keys on the keyboard along with the music. This type of program is something I’d recommend for students who love videogames.
3. Chrome Music Lab is a website that makes learning music more accessible through fun, hands-on experiments. It’s an interdisciplinary tool that explores music’s connections to science, math, and art with the use of live instruments and dance.
Make sure to have resources that you are able to screen share with students in their lessons. The reason why is that it is important to be able to accommodate visual learners who may not be able to understand what you are talking about so if both of you are able to look at it together, it makes things a lot easier. However, do not forget to have them purchase their own copies. It’s bad etiquette to continue to play on photocopies and I always encourage my students to play on originals.
Make your lessons interactive. Now, depending if you are teaching individual or group lessons, the dynamic can be different. For individual lessons, I usually take an etude that my students are learning and take turns playing each of the measures with the whole idea of sounding like one musician, but also helping with sight reading. While sometimes it is difficult to play duets as you would in an in-person setting, you can always pre-record one of the voices for the student to practice to. Since recording has become increasingly more accessible by everyone, it only takes seconds to be able to record something that we can pass to our students. For small group lessons, a good way of engaging everyone with their instruments is writing the note names on the whiteboard feature on zoom and using the pointer as a means of having them play together. While you may hear a little delay from some students who may not have the best Wi-Fi connection, it is actually a really fun way of getting everyone involved at the same time.
Be proactive. There is something that is always being created/invented everyday and it is important to keep updated on the most current technologies that you feel are beneficial for your students that are interactive and most importantly - fun!