Our Transition to Online Music Lessons
Music lessons, and music teachers, have existed since music has existed—for millennia. At Piano Workshop, our team of teachers has been providing piano lessons, guitar lessons, violin lessons, wind instrument lessons, percussion lessons, and voice lessons for over ten years to the Chester and surrounding communities. Since early March, when a global pandemic forced us to suspend traditional lessons, we created a mantra of, “Keep the music playing!” and we hit the ground, or shall we say—the internet, running.
Our teachers quickly adapted to providing online lessons through a variety of platforms including Zoom, Skype, FaceTime, Google Hangouts, Google Meet, and Google Duo, and have striven to keep continuity for our students in this time of great uncertainty and upheaval. We have honed skills to navigate some of the challenges of online learning. Audio latency, or delay, can be frustrating, so we have found that certain platforms tend to have a lower degree of latency such as FaceTime and Zoom, and latency can be further reduced by both the teacher and student wearing headphones. Some of our teachers have found that a combination headphone-microphone headset—commonly used for video gaming—to be a great asset in their teaching. For very young students who may struggle to hold attention during online lessons, teachers have adapted by splitting lessons into two weekly 15-minute sessions, which has enabled these students to stay engaged and focused and still learning. Teachers met and shared successes and challenges with our colleagues in Zoom faculty meetings, we organized virtual socializing for faculty—attempting to preserve the camaraderie we so enjoy in the studio, and we sent our director, Mark Weisman, on a Santa-Clause-like mission delivering new books and materials to students’ homes. We created a Facebook group where students and teachers alike could share information and inspiration from our online music education escapades. Likewise, our students and families have demonstrated great resilience and creativity in setting up spaces and technology to allow lessons to continue virtually. The fruits of these collective efforts were apparent in our massive spring virtual recital showcasing just as much talent, skill, and growth as our traditional live recitals do! Certainly, we are living up to that mantra to KEEP THE MUSIC PLAYING!
As we hit midsummer, we have begun to reintroduce some in-person lessons in our studio. We’ve implemented safety and sanitation measures including keeping the studio at 50% occupancy or below, having buffer time between each lesson to allow for sanitization of instruments and surfaces, and requiring face masks at all times. With guidance from academic music organizations, we have opted to keep voice lessons and wind instrument lessons fully online, as the safety of our students, teachers, and families is our top priority. As we look forward to our fall semester, we will continue to offer options of fully online lessons, in-person lessons, and a hybrid of online and in-person.
One last new addition-- we are very excited to share new ideas, inspirations, and experiences with you through our new blog! While we all continue to face many uncertainties, one thing is certain, and clear to all of us at Piano Workshop: whenever, wherever, and however, we will persevere. We will continue. We will keep the music playing!