TubeNet

I've been contacted by parents asking about getting Zoom lessons for their kids over the Summer. I'm thinking this could be a HUGE opportunity for extra income & easy to not leave my house. Any ideas how I might market this to get the news out to music stores & band directors across the country. If I do this, students don't need to be from just around my area.

Any ideas?

You will be limited by network delays, hardware issues, sub-optimal sound reproduction and student access. Almost all universities completed their semesters this way, and were not happy with it. FYI

For the frequency range the tuba occupies, audio reproduction is usually an issue.

I’ve been thinking about this a bit and how I would go about things if I were teaching.

I’d probably have the students record pieces ahead of time and send me the clips requested. I’d then listen these over and take notes. Then I’d have a roughly 30 minute call to discuss the notes and maybe do a few live diagnostic/curative things. Given the time split, I’d charge for one hour.

A lot of athletic coaching has been done online with video recordings and feedback which has been somewhat successful. For music lessons, I’d want to combine that with some live dialogue.

@MattG. That’s exactly what I’ve settled on. Maybe record and play or send examples back to them. Regular cell phone call is much less laggy than zoom.

One tip: within Zoom there is a setting to “enable original sound” and it is important to have your student click on this or else the audio quality is terrible. This can be found in different places depending on whether they use a phone, iPad, tablet or laptop.

I do agree with having the student do some recording in advance. In addition to the sound quality being better than live streamed, it ends up being a great practice tool for them trying achieve a “good enough” submission.

Bob

smileatom wrote:It depends on the quality of the mic on your laptop. I have been giving zoom lessons, sometimes it works sometimes not. When it doesnt, an iPhone and Facetime works just fine in its place.
The mic of the iPhone can handle it.

Is FaceTime in particular good for this? Are there other specialized tools that do better than Zoom, Skype, or Webex?

Thanks. I had a Skype lesson today, and sometimes the lag got in the way, but mostly it was fine. I used an old iPad with a Shure mic and some headphones; don’t know what the teacher used, but he had a dedicated mic and I could hear his playing fine. I was lucky to have headphones with a long cord, though, so I could set the iPad far enough back for a wider view.

make sure you turn off background sound suppression. Zoom thinks the tubas in the background.