Music Matters

Music Matters

A reminder for students to come and collect your instruments from the Diana Bowman Centre.  This is particularly important for Elective Music students as you will need your instrument for your at-home learning.  The time at home will provide everyone with a great opportunity for some dedicated practice.

Skype or Zoom?

Peripatetic staff have been advised to contact parents to provide options for their daughters to continue their instrumental tuition remotely.  This is not compulsory but is strongly encouraged for families to help maintain the learning for their daughters. 

Please read below for some advice and ideas to support this:

  1. It is important that there is an agreement between tutors and family for online learning to take place.  Tutors are encouraged to provide families with this agreement in writing with details of agreed date, time or platform on which this is to occur. 
  2. There should be a parent/guardian present for the duration of the online lesson.  This is to protect both parties.
  3. If you were to proceed with online learning families will need to have the correct infrastructure as the tutor.  (I hear that Zoom is preferred over Skype).

This needs to be agreed between both parties.

Practical considerations with online learning:

  • Make sure that students/families are set up for online lessons beforehand. 
  • Agree on an appropriate device (iPads? Laptops?)
  • Tutors should have the students/their parents’ contact details included for FaceTime.
  • Tutors have been encouraged to show parents how to tune the instrument in one of the early lessons – so then moving forward, this is something families can do before a scheduled lesson.

Tuner apps are available through App Stores to help with this.  Very helpful to have one installed if you haven’t got one already.  Your tutor can recommend one for you to install.

  • Depending on your instrument, tutors will discuss with their students/families how they should “setup” for the lesson. For example – where should a student stand in relation to the camera, making sure no relevant parts of the student’s setup are cropped (e.g. bow arm)
  • Where possible, families are encouraged to stay “offline” during the course of the lesson as this can sometimes help with the quality of the connection.
  • A dedicated space for the lesson is useful and helpful to eliminate distractions where possible.
  • Students should be dressed appropriately for the lesson.

 

The nature of what we do as musicians have dramatically changed.  While online learning may not be ideal, it is helpful for the current situation. 

Pauline Chow
Head of Music