The emphasis put on visual and asynchronous music making over Zoom means that my students are losing their ability to play along with other musicians.

I can see this ability deteriorating in every lesson, especially when I have them attempt to play along to a piano recording or play with me.

In order to supplement I’ve started relying heavily on Kerstin Wartburg’s Step-by-step recordings. I now use both the downloaded CD’s in my music library and the online IMTEX library to give the students something to play along with through all review material and performance pieces. The varied recorded speeds and quality of recordings makes the Step-by-step library invaluable during this era of distanced-learning.

For students who are meeting with me in person I have a small Anker bluetooth speaker that I control from my phone.

I make sure the parents of students in online lessons have the recordings and play them in the background. This is essential because if I stream the music from my computer I am unable to tell if the student is playing with the recording (due to lag).

Interestingly, some parents have opted to stick with the old school CD and CD player model. They like that the sound is not coming from a screen, that the child could easily control (play, stop, skip, pause) the music on their own, and that the overall setup isn’t a distraction.

For group class I stream straight from my computer using this method.

To guard against my own glitches in streaming I use ethernet connection, share my screen and optimize for music output.

Not only is playing with music in the lesson/home practice more exciting, it trains the essential skill of ensemble-ship which we don’t want to lose even in, or especially in, this unprecedented, isolating time.