Catherine Saint Louis
When John McClure, a pathologist in Edina, Minn, was pondering his wish list several years ago, he added something a little out of the ordinary: learn to play the bagpipes. But his goal seemed like a long shot after a friend who had been teaching him moved away. Now he is getting lessons from a top-tier teacher?Jori Chisholm, whose r?sum? includes a first-place award at the 2010 Cowal Highland Gathering in Dunoon, Scotland. Chisholm lives in Seattle, but distance is no longer a problem?McClure now takes lessons over Skype.
They even squeeze in a lesson sometimes when McClure is at work, though he keeps the noise down by using a practice chanter, essentially a pipe without a bag. Skype and other videochat programs have transformed the simple phone call, but the technology is venturing into a new frontier: it is upending and democratising the world of music lessons.
Students who used to limit the pool of potential teachers to those within a 20-mile radius from their homes now take lessons from teachers?some with world-class credentials? on other coasts or continents. The list of benefits is long: Players of niche instruments now have more access to teachers. Parents can simply send their child down the hall for lessons rather than driving them. And teachers now have a new way to build their business.
?I?ve seen videos of individuals teaching students all over the world,? said Gary Ingle, chief executive of the Music Teachers National Association. ?There will be people who would never take a music lesson unless it?s done online. As music teachers, we should be willing to meet students where they are.?
There is no data on the number of video music lessons, and many people certainly will prefer face-to-face lessons. But many music teachers said in interviews that they were conducting more lessons over broadband connections. Jeffrey Thomas, who has taught in music stores near Seattle for 22 years, now teaches guitar, bass and ukulele to 30 students over Skype and other webcam programmes. If he gets 10 more students, he said, he will teach entirely from home, saving the money he now pays to rent studio space. ?If you have a lesson at 4, and traffic won?t let you make it until 4:10, you just lost 10 minutes,? Thomas said. ?Having to get to this location to be in a lesson is now obsolete. There?s no need for it.?
Parents are also driving the shift to webcam music lessons. After Susan Patterson grew tired of taking her 13-year-old daughter, Taylor, 45 minutes each way for violin lessons, she e-mailed 15 violin teachers with Web sites.
The convenience of online learning means fewer missed lessons, said Nick Antonaccio, the owner of Rockfactory, a 10-room music studio in Newtown, that has 200 students, 25 of whom do some lessons remotely.
?People who do online lessons end up doing a more consistent lesson schedule,? he said. ?They don?t have to fight snowstorms. They don?t have to take an hour a day to get to us. Other things don?t conflict, like baseball games.? And most lessons are recorded so students can play them back while practicing, Antonaccio said.
However, many parents remain wary of laptop lessons. Their chief reservation is that teachers can?t manipulate a student?s fingers to fine-tune the subtleties of playing a string instrument.
Lessons over the home computer can create headaches of their own, though. Joey Potuzak, a guitarist in Mountlake Terrace, Wash., occasionally yelled at his family because the webcam connection required so much bandwidth.
Music teachers are finding that video lessons offer them some more stability for a profession that is known for its ups and downs. Video is also creating new opportunities for tech-savvy teachers to build a business in this struggling economy.