Instrumental lessons learned

There's no question, the learning curve was fierce. Zoom, Skype or what have you, we were grateful for a way to continue teaching in an unprecedented pandemic, but my word, we worked hard! After all, it was either go online or go unemployed. Fast forward 14 months and most lessons are delivered on campus or in homes again, but the skills we learnt teaching online need not fade away like many other lockdown restrictions. Our foray into digital delivery has offered the opportunity to flex some new skills. So, whether you're continuing online, in person, or both, let's keep flexing!

Use a digital drive

Whichever service you prefer, a cloud-based drive for digital notes is a game changer. Create during lessons, archive online, access via device. You can send it home via link or share button as a bonus mid-week reminder about practice goals, and copying in parents keeps them in the loop. Plus, you can search back as a precursor to lesson planning or a brief for the upcoming week. Win-win!

Expand your collection of tools

Brick and mortar classrooms have always offered visual aids, but online lessons kicked that up a notch. Screen sharing and toolbar functions were our new personal assistants. Going forward, get yourself a whiteboard app for tablet or smart phone. You can use it to demonstrate then hit the save button to drag and drop into digital notes. Screen sharing original PDFs and video files was a great take-away too. In this case, building an archive of warm-ups and exercises as well as utilising a library of demo videos can be a huge accelerator to learning. Pre-record yourself playing common examples and include a link along with weekly notes.

Add variety with supplementary apps

Using apps can even make practising feel like a game. Take Drummit, a smartphone and tablet app released by educator, Keith Bartlett. This is a simple groove library based on combinations of kick, snare and hi hat – the fun element being the ‘Spin it’ feature, offering a random beat generator displayed like a slot machine. Smooth interface and audio playback helps students to ‘Hear it’ before they attempt to ‘Drummit’ – a mode that enables you to adjust BPM and play along with audio while a cursor highlights counts in succession.

Another great teaching tool for drummers is Groove Scribe, available from international educator Mike Johnston. This browser-based tool is a simple notation software and drum machine in one. Unlike traditional software, it can notate a short pattern or fill within seconds using a quick-to-load web-based approach. Perfect for transcribing notation in lesson time, it has functionality to change time signatures and subdivisions effortlessly as well as playback in differing BPM or feel. You can even hit the download button to save a short PNG image to drop in – you guessed it – digital notes!

Check your student's home setup

This is something many of us never had the chance to do before. Of course, it seems like a no-brainer to us, but these are the things to lookout for: Is the music stand set up for good posture? Is the device loud enough to play along? Is there a metronome and/or tuner handy? If they play keyboard or drums, is the stand high enough? As we know, this stuff is key for developing solid skills. Even more importantly, online lessons get students used to playing at home. As creatures of habit, we're naturally more comfortable repeating what we've done before. Do one lesson online per term and get that practice ball rolling.

After a year-long dive into lessons online and a rather arduous adjustment, it's nice to know that we can keep some of those new skills. We certainly won't be wearing any rose-tinted glasses when we look back at this pandemic, but necessity is the mother of invention after all. A new way of delivering music lessons has filled up our bag of tricks and maybe even broadened our students' experience. Let's take the door prize and run.

www.drummit.co.uk

www.mikeslessons.com/apps