How to Make Online Music Lessons Work Better

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Make the most out of your virtual lessons

Most piano teachers and their students are now facing the challenge of online lessons. We would like to share what we do to make it go as smooth as possible and help you have a better understanding of it. Enjoy! 😊

 

  • Make sure you are using a wired connection to your laptop. Having lessons with smartphones or tablets which connect to WiFi do not work as good. They are many reasons why but the most important ones - your WiFi signal, router settings, and speed limitations of your device. So, it is much better to use laptop and a wire that directly connects to your internet modem or router.

  • Do the speed test before the lesson - either fast. com, speedtest.net or any others. It is important to check the speed to make sure nothing is clogging the internet connection. Your family member can be uploading photos or videos, watching Netflix, or YouTube. Ask them to stop doing that for 45 or 60 minutes and do something else (read a book?... :))

  • Microphone settings.

    • You can use your internal microphone from your laptop but consider investing in a good quality external cardioid condenser USB microphone like AudioTechnica AT2020USB+, Tonor Q9 or similar. Also, make sure to add a pop filter and a stand.

    • Most of the apps that exist for online communication are designed to provide you with clean sound for conversations. So, developers use all kinds of tools available to them to make background noise less noticeable. Unfortunately, for online music lessons that does not work very well - so make sure you turn off all kinds of noise cancelation algorithms. This is usually found in Audio/Video settings of your app choice. We will review this setting in detail for specific apps in the next section. You might also want to experiment with input level of your internal mic on your laptop to eliminate sound distortion.

  • If you have an electronic keyboard like Kawai Digital Piano, or Yamaha Clavinova (we recommend using keyboards that have weighted key action and a full 88-key layout) - connect it directly to the computer either by using the USB cable or Line-Out to your audio interface (if you have one). Then, make sure the application you are using to teach or take online lessons sees both your microphone and the keyboard as ONE input source. In order to do that, you would need a virtual mixer installed on your computer - VB-Audio VoiceMeeter (for Windows users) or Loopback (for Mac users). 

  • Application choice.

    • There is a range of apps that work well. If you have a high speed internet connection with more than 100 MB/s download and 25 MB/s upload speed - Discord or Skype will be your best options. In our experience Discord works best - it is the most customizable and stable app so far. The audio and video quality are really good. Zoom would work better for slower speeds - provided you have changed microphone settings outlined below. The sound will still be not ideal because of Zoom’s audio codec compression. Hangouts, Viber, and FaceTime would not be our top picks because they lack any kind of tweaking background noise, so the sound of your piano might not sustain very long and the audio will be altered. However, you can make them capture sound better by doing this: if you have a Windows PC laptop go to Control Panel —> Hardware and Sound —> Recording Tab —> Right click on Microphone —> Properties —> Enhancement Tab and turn on Disable all sound effects. If you are a MacBook user go to System Settings —> Sound —> and turn off “Use ambient noise reduction”.

  • Specific app settings.

    • Discord - a popular app designed for online gamers. So almost every kid knows about it. ;) Here is how to adjust the sound settings to suit our needs. Create your channel, invite your students to it and then: go to User Settings —> Voice & Video —> Input Sensitivity and turn the slider all the way to the left. Then scroll down to Voice Processing and turn off Noise Reduction and Automatic Gain Control. After that go ahead and your mic settings by pressing Let’s Check button on top.

    • Skype. Go to Settings —> Audio & Video and disable Automatically adjust microphone settings. After that make a test call to make sure everything is working properly.

    • Zoom. Go to Settings —> Audio —> Advanced and turn off Suppress Persistent Background Noise and Intermittent Background Noise. If you have a good internet connection - you have an option to turn on original sound and enable stereo. Test the sound to make sure all is good by clicking on Test Mic button.

  • Use Dropbox or any other file sharing service. We prefer to use Dropbox because of Dropbox Paper integration and a great smartphone app which lets you record audio and scan files right within it. You can setup a shared folder with your student, let them record practicing sessions and scan theory assignments. Dropbox Paper is super useful for taking lesson notes and writing homework.

    Hope this helps! If you have any questions or need help with setting everything up, including VoiceMeeter or Loopback - contact us and we will schedule a meeting with you and walk you through it! Happy online teaching - stay safe and practice social distancing!

    Love, Ostinato.



 
Vitaly Serebriakovonline, lessons, guidesComment