Online Music Education, the new normal?
Effectiveness of Online Music Lessons
by Irma de Jong
We started 2020 in social distancing, which has accelerated the need and appreciation for online learning and teaching. Many musicians were forced to go online, as it remained the only possibility to reach their students and continue making a living. Even the most skeptics made the first online steps and discovered Online Music Lessons' effectiveness, or did they find reasons to confirm their beliefs? Let's have a look!
"The way we think becomes the way we play."
We spoke to Nadia David, an online music teacher at iClassical Academy, who shared with us her experiences. Nadia David enjoys a solo and chamber music career and has taught at the Fine Arts Academy.
"The way we think becomes the way we play, and a flexible brain is what produces a flexible body.
Thinking difficult, we will be straining muscles to render musical content, to please teachers and audiences. It will prevent us from discovering that sound resonance and freedom mirror how we feel, that is, how the instrument that is our body feels.
Thinking easy, we learn to become aware that if we stay down in our weight, we find a continuous line of movement and breathing that organically connects all parts of the ingeniously built body and its leading Mind.
We need a large field of choices to widen our views, add things, and stay open to learning and comparing.
A vibrant presentation of different approaches to understanding music and playing the cello, as masterfully gathered on the online platform iClassical Academy, for example, will give a rare possibility to broaden our perspective because we tend to go straight to what we think is necessary for immediate use.
With online masterclasses, grouped on a diversity of teachers and pieces, we find precious information that usually takes students to travel distant places. Now on one platform with an entire collection, we can observe different approaches. We learn how to choose what we think fits for ourselves at a certain moment only by relating it to as many different options as possible. And so, the more information we add, the more clear will become what our real choice is.
The more references, the more we learn!"
"My Mission? To reveal to the youngs to find the best of themselves"
Virginie Robilliard is a Professor of violin at the Haute École de Musique de Lausanne in Switzerland and an active online teacher since 2014. She has made herself utterly comfortable with the power of the Internet, and going global in a sustainable way is essential for her. She uses the net to reach her students in Venezuela, Argentina, France, and now, with the help of iClassical Academy, worldwide.
Virginie uses the digital world to help spread her mission to teach as many young people as possible and help them find their way into the musical scenery.
"I feel it as my mission to guide people to see how beautiful and divine music is. I feel very privileged to be a musician because it connects me to beauty."
"It’s a connection."
Vera Tsu, Professor & Master Tutor of the Central Conservatory in Beijing and Shanghai Conservatory.
"It’s a connection between teachers and students in the world. Like music, the Internet has no boundaries, and I am grateful to have been able to combine these two forces. It helps us to stay connected, especially in difficult times, as we lately experienced."
Variety of Learning Breeds Success
Based on recent studies by music organizations worldwide, it was found that students are constantly seeking different teachers for different areas of their instrument or voice range. New generations can study more in-depth at home online, with new learning possibilities. They want different influences.
Regardless of where musicians choose to learn their craft, the fact remains that they are choosing to obtain their information from a variety of sources aside from their primary private teachers.
Or, to make it short in Nadia David's words:
"Clarify your own choice by comparison!"
Become an online teacher with iClassical Academy
iClassical Academy offers the possibility to market your online course and gives you a platform to sell it online. It's not the One-2-One solution, but a more sustainable solution where you record your course once and keep it for years available on their platform for a worldwide audience. Although iClassical's Masterclasses are made for violin, cello, piano, and trumpet, courses are accepted for all instruments.
You'll find more about the musiMentor Program here.