Do Online Music Lessons Work?

During the circumstances of the COVID-19 global pandemic, everyone’s life is impacted and has changed in different ways. Due to the spread of the epidemic, a city goes in lockdown out of sudden becomes a common situation.

Melbourne now is in its fourth lockdown – it seems that the lockdown has become a part of people’s lives today. In this situation, everything starts to move online, i.e. online meeting, online shopping. What about our music lessons? Should we stop our classes because we are unable to continue the face-to-face classes now? Many students from Bumblebee Arts Centre also have the same worry that they can’t attend their flute lessons on our Berwick campus. Fortunately, we are also moving our music class online, but at the same time, do online music lessons really work?

Since we are looking for an alternative solution, online teaching and learning from home has definitely come to the forefront of how music schools are continuing to provide teaching. However, unlike normal school classes, music lessons require more complex teaching in the sense that teachers need to pass on the skill of operating the musical instruments. Do online music lessons work?

Online music lessons are growing rapidly and are becoming a very popular and effective way of learning but what are the pros and cons of this?

There Are Many Benefits To Having Online Music Lessons

• There is no doubt that having online lessons allows you not to be limited by your location to undertake the course – it means you can have the lesson anywhere around the world. For example, during the pandemic, you can learn your flute courses with teachers from Bumblebee Arts Centre without physically attending our campuses. In the future, you won’t miss out on any class even though you are travelling – You can take our teachers with you!
• You can reduce the time that you need to travel from home to our campuses and the time that you need to set up your instrument. Besides, our children can avoid the risk that they might be exposed to the virus in the public area.
• Sometimes, we have students that forget to bring their books. With online music courses, forgetting stuff is no longer a problem as the material is all at your fingertips!
• Family members can also be involved in the class easily if they want to help the students. So once the course is finished, the students can find someone to discuss while they are practising. Of course, recording the courses is also possible if you want to play them back later.
• At present, the time for children to receive music training is still after class or during vacation time and they can only have on average one or two classes per week. That means during the rest of the time, they probably can’t contact teachers easily and can only practise at home by themselves. Many doubts and questions can’t be solved timely and might be forgotten before attending the next course. Online music course breaks the limitations of geography and time so that teachers can promptly supervise students to practise, correct mistakes and understand their learning progress.
• Teachers can be more concentrated on students’ hand position and posture since we can adjust the camera to zoom in. This is very important for learning the flute with a correct hand posture.
• While we’re stuck at home, parents can also have some personal time if their children attend an online course.

The Cons of Online Music Lessons

• Learning the acoustic is obviously better through face-to-face mode. But you can offset this by using a good microphone and attend the live lessons occasionally.
• The internet connection can also be a problem sometimes – limited by the speed of the Internet or other technical issues. However, nowadays the Internet and our devices are more reliable than before, so if teachers and students can have a basic understanding of computers, this problem is rare and can be solved.
• At Bumblebee Arts Centre, we regularly train our teachers to get familiar with computer and the tools that we used to perform online teaching (i.e. Zoom).
• Of course, we can’t check student’s fingers and small muscle coordination via online music lesson. However, our teachers are professional and experienced. They are able to find out common problems by looking at students’ posture and pointing them out. Also, attending occasion live classes can counteract this.

Overall, online lessons are an excellent alternative especially when we are in the COVID-19 pandemic. We are able to continue our fun and joyful music learning without leaving home. We are trying our best to motivate students and let them participate in our online classrooms by designing interesting activities.

At Bumblebee Arts Centre, we provide music and art online lessons via Zoom. We want to help our student to enjoy and have fun while they are learning craft, painting, drawing at home and we also offer piano, singing and flute lesson at Berwick and McKinnon campus.

If you have any idea or problem, please contact us here.