Adventures in Online Teaching Part I - Setting Up Your Studio Space

April 3, 2020, 7:07 PM · Like many of you, I’ve pivoted to online teaching for individual and group lessons as a way to stay connected with the families who normally come to my home studio on a weekly basis. With the camera and sound equipment I already had in storage, this is how I set up my teaching studio to run online lessons. I thought I'd share what is working for me, in case it can provide ideas for other teachers and students about how to set up your own studio or practice space for online interaction.

iMac running Zoom meeting (with all audio settings optimized for music transmission.)
I prefer to run one continuous meeting, without password, so that the students may enter the "office" a few minutes before their lesson time begins. I’ve set up one meeting code and given that to all of the students. I enable the "mute upon entering" feature so their household sound does not bleed into the lesson I’m finishing. The subscription version of Zoom allows for longer meeting lengths. The free version cuts off after 40 minutes.

There is a "Waiting Room" option in Zoom, which can be helpful if you don’t want the current lesson to be interrupted by the next student. I enjoy overlapping my students with each other in the 5-minute bridge between lessons to play a game or activity together. They are accustomed to seeing each other pass in person, and they’re all happy to see their friends on the screen for a few minutes.
I’ve optimized my technology for lessons and classes to mimic their in-person lesson experience as much as possible as a way to sustain a sense of normalcy and community.
Camera 1 – for full torso shot of teacher, a Canon Vixia HD camera connected to the iMac through an HDMI-to-USB video capture device. This HD camera offers a clearer picture than the internal camera on the iMac. We angled the video camera to capture the identical set-up and view the students have of me during their in-person lessons. The video capture device is a small adapter that connects the camera to the computer for live video stream. Without this adapter, most external video cameras (except webcams) can’t send their streaming signal to the computer. The cable that comes with the video camera is usually only for transferring recorded files from the memory device on the camera to the computer.
Camera 2 – "The FingerCam" for string LH or piano key close up, a HUE HD webcam with a twisty neck (borrowed from my son’s stop-time animation kit.) Since this is a webcam designed for streaming, it doesn’t require a capture card. The twisty neck is helpful for adjusting to show my hands close up.
Microphone - Samson USB condenser mic. It’s clear and directional, so it picks up my violin and voice without grabbing the sound coming back in the speakers and creating feedback. If you are teaching from your computer or phone using the internal microphone and speakers, the sound from the speaker can infiltrate the mic and create a loop on the other end. This sounds like a garbled echo to the student. If you use an external directional mic, make sure the speaker is behind the mic in such a way that the mic cannot pick up the speaker’s sound directly.
iPad – when connected to the iMac with the USB cable, or through AirPlay and screen mirroring, the iPad can use the screen share feature in the Zoom meeting to display whatever is showing on the iPad screen to the people in the meeting. I use this share feature to show PDFs of music and lesson handouts.
All of my music PDFs, blank pages of manuscript "paper" and other lesson handouts are saved in the ForScore app, which also allows in-app annotations which show up on the screen in real time. For example, I designed a note-taking sheet for lessons that I can put up on the screen while the students watch me "write" onto their lesson assignment sheet with my Apple pencil.
After the lesson is over, I email an annotated PDF of the assignment sheet directly to the student or their parent from the app. This is an interactive supplement to the notes they have taken during the lesson on their end. When showing videos from Youtube or other platforms, the screen share feature from the computer itself works better than running the video through the attached tablet due to lag time of buffering videos through the cable or Airplay.
Playing together vs Mute function. Because of the inherent lag time in video and audio transmission, it’s not really possible to play "together" with a student and have it sound synced up on both ends. There are a few work-arounds teachers can use to simulate playing together for the students’ sake.
1. If I set the tempo on my end with a "Wait, wait, ready, Go!" or have a metronome playing in my studio, and then play on time and keep my own steady beat, the students on their end can play along with what they hear. The timing of their transmission back on my end will be "late", so I adjust my expectation of what I see and hear to be slightly after my own beat. I’m able to asses their bow speed, bow direction, string crossing, pitch, posture and tone like I otherwise would. When I provide a steady playing model to accompany them, I can disregard what sounds like poor ensemble togetherness.
2. Muting the student. Both host and participant in a Zoom meeting can mute themselves. Additionally, the host can "Mute all" in the class from the host tools. Muting the individual student is useful if you don’t want to hear what they’re playing, and some teachers prefer not to hear the delayed playing when trying to play together.
  
  I prefer not to mute the individual students when we play together and I can handle a little delay for the sake of hearing what they’re doing. I recommend having the teacher be the one to control the mute on/off settings for everyone so that the students or their parents are not scrambling to click the button, or forget to turn it back on when the student starts playing or talking again. In a psychological sense, having a teacher say, "Now mute your microphone to play with me" sounds like "I don’t want to hear you" and I prefer not to telegraph a message like that to my students.
  The "mute all" feature works well in group class settings when all the students try to play together, since a delayed feedback loop with a group of students sounds like utter cacophony. I turn this on and off in my host settings without making it a big deal in the class. The students see each other play, but can only hear me.
Headphones with Mic for recording tracks in Acapella app to create multi-part video arrangements with advanced students. I’ll add more information about how I’m using the Acapella app with my advanced students in "Adventures in Online Teaching Part II – Group Class Ideas"
Instruments – acoustic 4/4 violin, 16 ½" Viola, 7’ Steinway B, Baritone and Soprano Ukuleles, Weber Mandolin, fractional violins of varying sizes.

The great news is: the technology works pretty well! As we read in Thomas’s post about the comparisons between video conferencing software, there doesn’t seem to be a clear leader for a platform that prioritizes audio fidelity for music conferencing.

I prefer my students to use the Zoom platform on a computer, not a tablet or phone, so they can adjust the advanced audio settings on their end. Tablets and phones do not give access to advanced audio settings. I ask the students to make the following adjustments in the advanced settings: Original sound ON, intermittent and persistent background suppression DISABLED, Auto control of volume OFF. The students who are able to connect even a modest external microphone to their computer improve the fidelity of the sound they send back to me by significant strides.

A ribbon microphone on either end would enable even clearer and more resonant sound than a condenser mic, but these are not typically priced for most families. A ribbon mic on the teacher’s end would greatly enhance the sound of the teacher’s playing to the student and would be a value-add for any online studio set-up.

I’ll add "Adventures in Online Teaching Part II – Group Class ideas" and "Adventures in Online Teaching Part III – Supplemental Materials" in the next few days.

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