Disadvantages to Teaching Online
This is the topic teachers are almost always curious about. Will you be able to accompany your student? Will you be able to jam? Can you, in short, play in time with each other?
The short answer is that you can, kind of. While even on great connections, there's typically a mite bit of latency for the sound to travel back, we have seen some teachers who can deal with it, and accompany their students with aplomb. That is, you can set a beat, and the student will think he is following it. It will sound, to him, like you're playing together, and if you can maintain the beat on your end, by turning the sound down or muting the student, you can do so. But honestly it's not easy.
There are two main alternatives to playing in time, if the connection is not strong enough for you to maintain the simultaneous play.
- Instead of playing with each other, you can simply demonstrate, and then let the student try. Re-demonstrate, and they'll try again, and so forth.
- To allow them to play along with you, you'll need to record yourself and let them access the files. With Lessonface, you can pass files over the platform during the lesson, but we really recommend doing the transfer before, or after the lesson. Most people have limited bandwidth and screen space, and getting them to download and open a file while you're maintaining the video chat is frankly asking for a bit of trouble. If you're both very comfortable with the technology, go for it, but otherwise, get them the files before the lesson, or after, so as to allow them to practice the exercises you set up.
That's the end of our Teaching Music Online 101 guide.