Online Lessons Troubleshooting
When you and your teacher can hear and see each other well, online lessons are really great!
Here are a few tips to make online lessons successful:
Make sure you have downloaded the most recent zoom app on your device. Are you a first-time zoom user? Click here to learn how to join a zoom meeting with an iPad.
Please make the effort to have the environment be as focused as possible.
Aim for good lighting
Have instruction books, materials and a pencil ready.
Be sure your device is charged, or keep your device plugged in to power.
Before your lesson, make sure you can hear and see yourself playing your instrument. That allows you to have a full lesson of making music rather than troubleshooting audio and video settings together.
If you do need to adjust audio and video settings, see below for troubleshooting tips.
How to adjust audio settings
Sometimes zoom technology will cancel out some instrument music calling it “background noise” (ha!) similar to hearing a car pass by outside during a meeting. This will result in only hearing some of the students’ music or distorted sounds.
To resolve this, you’ll need to turn on the setting called “original sound for musicians.”
How to adjust the audio settings on zoom for an IPAD or IPHONE:
How to adjust the audio settings on zoom for an DESKTOP / LAPTOP:
How to adjust video settings on iPad or iPhones
Have you noticed on some new iPads and iPhones the camera will follow faces instead of the whole room, and therefore you playing your instrument?
If so, that can be distracting for you and your teacher. You teacher also wants to SEE YOU playing your instrument, as well as hear you, so they can offer you the best tips to improve.
I looked into it, and tracking faces is a fancy Apple setting called "Center Stage." It works great for presentations with keeping the speaker's face in the center of the frame, but not so great if you want to focus on anything else, like watching someone play a musical instrument.
Here are a couple articles about the "Center Stage" setting:
Here's how to enable (and therefore disable) the "Center Stage" setting in zoom: https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0066897
Here's more about the Center Stage from Apple: https://support.apple.com/en-us/111102
How to disable the "Center Stage" video setting while on zoom for an IPAD or IPHONE:
Hope that helps!
Thanks for all you do to support your students’ music making!
Emily Ireland,
Owner, Director
Brighter Minds Music