"Keys to Connection: Online Piano Teaching Resources"

How can we work with the positive aspects of teaching music lessons online to best support our students?

I read a caption written by my friend Matthew Palumbo on Facebook last week that reminded me of the good we can bring into the world right now.  He wrote, "I told all of my students, even my itty bitty young ones and college students - your most important assignment right now is to make someone smile at least once a day."  I cherish this idea and asked my students to do the same this last week!  The one-on-one opportunity we have as teachers to be a listening ear and also remind students of the good that they can bring into the world in these days is so important. 

It is my mission to inspire my piano students to delight in the beauty and power of the timeless language of music.  I equip my students to practice productively with healthy technique, share their music with others, explore creative expression, and develop a rounded music education.  I may be teaching online right now and these values remain true!  I'm focusing on the aspects of teaching that are best supported on video lessons such as technique, creative expression, music history, theory, arranging, memorizing pieces, and sharing music with others.  This article is going to give suggestions from my teaching experience and what has worked best for me.

Teaching online platform preferred:  Zoom

• Zoom provides the best audio / video quality in my experience.
• This platform is accessible to all students  (Mac / PC / Android / iPhone / iPad).
• I have the option to "turn on original sound" (check out "advanced" in audio settings) to make audio more clear.
• It is compatible with "EpocCam HD" to turn your phone / tablet into a HD webcam.  I use my iPad on a tripod mount behind me and can easily switch between my laptop and the iPad during lessons to demonstrate.
• I can "screen share" PDFs or the screen to my iPad with details I want my students to see. 
• I can schedule "recurring" lessons with students - this helps with organization and only has to be setup once!
• I have an option to add a password to scheduled lessons.
• I can host group piano class and send invites to specific groups of students to join!  
• I can share assignments in the "chat" for students to print at home.

A few things I've learned:

• My internet provider recommended 30/30 mpbs internet speed for online video lessons.
• Do you have 30/30 mpbs internet speed and your connection is still slow?  Contact your internet provider and see if they can send you a new router if yours is old like mine.  I received my new router over the weekend and have a much better connection this week for lessons!
• Is your voice tired?  Do your students have trouble hearing you?  I generally just use my internal computer microphone for audio.  However, today I discovered that using my Apple headphones with a built in microphone on the cord works well to rest my voice and my students can hear me talk more clearly.  Side note:  the piano sounds better with the computer audio than the apple headphone speaker.
• Put a lamp in front of you so you're not backlit or looking like a silhouette!
• Make sure your setup you're using for online lessons supports a healthy posture for you.
  
• If all you have is your phone and a good internet connection, that's a good place to start for online teaching! 
• I experimented using my Zoom H4N recording device as a microphone connected to Zoom.   However, my students heard feedback when I used the Zoom H4N until I put on headphones.  I don't want to have to wear headphones all day and the computer audio is just fine.  There are a lot of other USB microphones available if your students are having trouble hearing you!
• Fun icebreaker:  ask to meet your student's dog or cat who they've always talked about!

Piano Party Group Class on Zoom:

I know my students will continue to connect with their music, their friends in my studio, and myself as their teacher when I continue to provide creative solutions to this season we're in today!  I will be hosting my second group piano performance classes using Zoom the last Friday of this month.  

Last month, I had three small groups of students (6-8 each) meet on a Zoom call for 45 minutes to share some music with each other, introduce their pets to everyone, and give some feedback about each performance.   It was a lot of fun!  Another question I asked students is, "how does this piece of music make you feel?"  I value supporting students name their feelings, whether we're in quarantine or not.  Music gives us the place to do that!  We also played a few rhythm games that I'll write about in another blog post.  I had students come back to their individual lessons this week and ask when the next group Zoom call will be :) 

These are the steps I took to setup this Zoom group piano call:

• I scheduled a video call on my account for 5:00 - 5:45PM on 3/20/2020.
• I set a password for the video call.
• I copied the link for the Zoom lesson invitation and pasted it in an email to my students signed up at 5:00PM.
• During the Zoom call, I mute everyone except for the student who is playing so there is no added noise.
• I do have a "Pro" Zoom account so I am able to host meetings longer than 40 minutes with 3+ people.

Consider taking lessons yourself!

Last week, I signed up to begin taking piano lessons again!  My teacher is Clark Beckham who was the runner up for American Idol in 2015.  Initially, Clark was supposed to be on his second tour right now until it was cancelled due to COVID-19.  He adapted to his circumstances and made the decision to begin teaching individual lessons on Zoom!  He focuses his teaching around five major pillars of music:  voice, instrumentation, arrangement theory, songwriting, and career advice.

It's always both vulnerable and life-giving to be a student again.  I'm taking some instrumentation and arrangement theory from Clark on a weekly basis.  Last week we re-harmonized a few songs and reviewed non-diatonic chord substitutions.  So fun!  I encourage you to consider reaching out to a teacher to see if they're taking any new students.  I know that when I'm learning as a teacher I'm more invested in developing a engaging curriculum for my students!  It's also helpful to see what it's like to be a student on an online platform.

Apps for iPad to Support Learning:

• "Pulse" - colorful metronome app! (free)
• "Note Rush" - note naming app with custom themes ($5)
• "Drum Beats +" - Drum machine app with more than 100 beats!  Fun for scales and pieces.  ($5)
• "Turbo Scan" - Simplifies scanning a piece of music with your phone to a PDF ($6)
• "Piano Maestro" - Play songs, practice scales, practice Hanon, & perform method book songs including Hanon, Piano Pronto, and others with background accompaniment!   Students can send recordings of themselves playing the songs to you through their student account  (Free for 3 months)
• "EpocCam HD" - Turns your phone into a HD webcam to offer different video perspective.  I recommend also getting a phone / tablet tripod mount!
• "Acapella" - Students can record themselves playing melodies and harmonies of their music (Free)
• "Adobe Sketch" - Students can create their own digital art for compositions!  (Free with free Adobe account)

Host a Studio Festival Online:

My local music teachers association made the decision to cancel our honors recitals and competitions.  At this time, we weren't prepared to move all of those competitions online.  However, I want to encourage you to consider hosting your own festival in your studio!  Here's some ideas:

• Composing Festival:  hire a colleague who is a composer to adjudicate students' compositions!  Then, have a Zoom call with your students and the composer to perform the pieces.  Or, have students submit recordings.  This could either be a competition with ribbons, or simply a festival where students receive a very special letter with feedback from the composer.  
• Ribbon Festival:  create your own in-studio online ribbon festival!  Be creative.  Come up with unique levels, categories, and opportunities for students to record their pieces and submit them on an "unlisted" YouTube page or a private dropbox file.  You can adjudicate your students or hire a colleague to choose winners.   Then, mail out ribbons to your students afterwards!
• Note about uploading online videos:  make sure to have students parents sign an authorization and release form prior to submission of videos.  This is necessary even if videos are posted to a private online channel!

Have Students Record Themselves

This is valuable all the time and especially right now.  There are a few pieces that just don't communicate best over a live video platform.  So, I ask my advanced students to record their pieces and upload to a "unlisted" YouTube channel prior to our lesson.  Then, they send me the link and I have time to review what we'll work on in lesson.  I can either write back to them with what to work on, or we follow up in lesson with what they've sent to me.  

Online composing:  "Noteflight"

I've used Noteflight for a few years now.   My students enjoy having a platform online that they can write their own compositions and share them easily with me!  Noteflight accounts are free to create up to 10 compositions.  Lately, I've been using Noteflight to write warm ups for my students.  This can look like a simple pentascale pattern or full 4 octave patterns.   I like Noteflight because it's easy to add unique articulations, transpose, and create something new each week for my students.

Now that I'm teaching on Zoom, I "screen share" with my students when I'm creating their warm up on Noteflight.  It's always exciting to figure out what all those unusual articulation symbols mean, and it's always funny to put a fermata at the top of your scale.   Also, it gives my students the opportunity on Zoom to "screen share" with me to show me what they're working on in Noteflight and ask me questions.  

Introducing New Music:-  Refer to NCTM Teacher Profile Project #2:

I value the Music Teachers National Certification Program not only as a professional certification, but also as a continued education tool for myself as a teacher.  I encourage you to consider these 6 questions (written in bold) you can integrate in your lessons when you introduce a new piece with a student!​

1. When introducing this piece, what would you discuss with the student concerning the musical time period, composer and compositional style?   This gives you the opportunity to have a conversation about life during that time, share YouTube videos of dances and multiple performance videos.
2. When introducing this piece, what major elements of theory would you discuss with a student? These elements could, for example, include such information as major key areas, cadence locations and types, important modulations, interesting harmonies, the form of the piece, etc. Be sure to specify measure numbers and to which beat of the measure you are referring in your answers.  Personally, I'm having students make a copy of their music and write in more of theory cadences / chord progressions / unique chords and email it to me.  Then, we go over their analysis at our next lesson online!  It's brought up a lot of great questions that integrates theory naturally into a lesson.
3. Indicate at least three specific skills a student must possess to successfully play this piece.  Lately, I've been asking my students this question!  I think it's great for them to look at a piece and see what skills they think they need.  I am focusing on asking questions lately, and listening.  It's good to see what my students recognize as skills they must have, and eye opening to see what they don't think of when they look at a piece of music.  
4. Discuss how you would teach a historically and stylistically appropriate interpretation of this piece. This could include such elements as articulation, pedaling, dynamics and ornamentation.
5. Discuss at least four potential reading and/or technical difficulties in this piece and how you would help the student solve these problems.  This Is a great time to support students with more sight reading material and give them technical warm ups to work through their difficult passages!
6. Discuss where you would mark appropriate practice strategies and/or memory sections in this piece. 

Want do download your own Teacher Profile Project handbook?  Go to https://certification.mtna.org/Certification/Get_Certified/TPP/Piano_Overview.aspx
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In closing....

".....your most important assignment right now is to make someone smile at least once a day." -Matthew Palumbo

​Whether you're teaching 5 students or 50 online this week, I want you to know that your presence in your students lives matters right now.  Even though students may not be in your home studio, the consistency of lessons with you might mean more than you may ever know.  Let's be kind to ourselves and the world around us as we take this day by day.

Much love,

~Miss Rose 🌹🎹