Online Piano Teaching Chronicles: The 2020 Pandemic
COVID-19 and the Lockdowns
It felt unreal…we’d all heard about “corona virus” and even joked about it, not realizing how dire the situation would become. We began to hear murmurs that the school might shut down. Then all of a sudden before several of my friends and colleagues could play their degree recitals, the announcement came in mid March: the University of Alberta would cease in-person instruction and switch to online lectures only until further notice.
I was fortunate to have played my first DMus recital in November of 2019, but a few of my friends on the cusp of wrapping up their masters degree suddenly had the rug yanked from under their feet. What would the culmination of their two years of work look like in the midst of a pandemic? And for the rest of us, how would learning, presenting papers, and interacting with instructors and classmates work through online lessons? This was uncharted territory for us all, and while everyone’s experiences were different, for me the results were surprising….
Initial Experiences with Online Music Lessons
As a graduate student, my first experience doing musical work online was through a Whatsapp video call with my teacher, Jacques Despres. I set up my phone on a tripod in a practice room and played through Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G-sharp Minor, Op. 32 No. 12. He gave me constructive feedback and encouragement, but lamented that the sound quality was simply incapable of doing justice to my performance. Despite the deficiency of our resources, we still managed to have a productive conversation.
My next memorable experience with online instruction was the end of year piano pedagogy group class where we presented our final projects. Mine was listening to recordings of performing artists as well as self-recordings as a means of improving our interpretive instincts. Incidentally, this topic formed the basis for much of my doctoral research. The class met through Google Meet, and despite the imposed social distancing, we managed to cultivate the same conversational chemistry we typically did in person, and I successfully gave my presentation which was partly lecturing, and demonstrating musical examples on my Yamaha P-125 B keyboard at home.
Looking Ahead at the Future of Virtual Instruction
While in both cases, the audio and video quality was just barely acceptable, I ultimately had an enjoyable and productive time continuing my studies online. I knew that online music lessons had potential. We all just had to learn to harness the technology and get it to work in our favor during the prolonged lockdowns.
With the 2020-2021 school year just around the corner, I had to do just that I was expected to continue teaching a keyboards fundamentals class. And it was in my work as a piano instructor that I began fully exploring the potential of online piano lessons, and the potential they had once I optimized my software and gear. Stay tuned for the next installment!