Ker-Ching - 100% Exam Distinction Rate * See Below
Get Next Level Tutoring in Literacy and Maths
Call or email us now - See Contact page.
23.04.20 – Darrell Priestley
Since trials of online teaching began fully one month ago, most of our students are now on board and having regular lessons, so I wanted to take the chance to welcome you all – wherever have you been? No, don’t answer that, I can guess!
After auditioning several possible apps that allow online meetings with both sound and vision, we finally settled on Microsoft Teams as being the most suitable for both our purposes and scale. This proved to be a good decision. Microsoft’s new flagship meeting software is clearly very important to the company, and as I understand it is under continual development. Crucially, though, it is meeting our needs very well, and is proving simple to use in practice.
Once someone has joined their first online ‘meeting’, it’s proving very straightforward in repeat meetings, is quick to connect and slick to use, offering decent sound and vision, which in practice are limited only by the hardware used. Teams is easy to get the hang of, with a clear display and accessible controls. A relative joy to use, in fact.
When it became clear that continuing my love of teaching music meant moving online, I believed instinctively that we, the other teachers led by myself, could make it work. Look at everything as an opportunity, and you will see that the present situation has it’s advantages. Students, most of them, have more time in one place now than ever before, with access to their instrument. It follows that, if you plan your practice time around your lesson time, warming up before and following up on new ideas staight afterwards, you will get a great start on your week’s work. And so it is proving.
I offer my students guidance on how to approach practicing in the present situation, and there is no doubt it is working well for everyone, especially after two or three lessons to get used to it. Of course, some things are more complicated, like demonstrating technic, and it is here that the teacher really has to adapt their approach, so as to find other ways to achieve the goals they set. However, this is also where a good teacher proves their worth, and again, a good teacher will relish such challenges. But it would not be true to say that I don’t miss live lessons, or the joy of playing duets with my students in real time. While I do not see online lessons as a substitute for the live work I do in person, it certainly offers a very viable alternative at this time.
There is always something very special about sharing music with others, and the best examples of that are playing music ‘live’ with others, in the same place and at the same time. Because of the slight time delay online, this is just one example of where in person lessons will always excel. One thing that I have always done, and never better than now after more than four decades of teaching practice, is to create excercises to help students overcome the immediate challenges they face on pieces they are learning. Working live, it is easy to come up with great ideas, practice drills and so on, and convey them very quickly to students, in a way that suits them as an individual.
At this point, all teachers are now bringing or have already brought their students on board with online music lessons. There were practical reaons that delayed this happening on a large scale at first, and Eileen and I have worked hard, spending long hours and much effort at the kitchen table to get things to this point. We had to confront the fact that major changes were needed to the business back end to facilitate this, but to mix a few mataphores we bit the bullet, pulled out all the stops and left no stone unturned. Happily, that work is mostly done now, with just a few finishing up jobs still to do. Nearly all of my students are now well under way, with the last few taking their first online lesson this week. Hallelujah!
While we have made strenuous efforts to contact everyone, we know that sometimes emails can be missed, or the email address we have for you may now be out of date. If you have not heard from us, please email and request information about lessons online. This also includes free support for students who would like lessons, but are not in a position to take them at the moment. We have prepared for this need, and would be pleased to help all our existing students, because we know how how great a difference having music can make to your life, and even the lives of those around you, at testing times like the one we are all living through.
Remember, we are here for you, just an email away. Stay safe, and stay strong.
With love to all, Darrell & Eileen
22.04.20 – -Darrell Priestley
Now pay attention, class, because there will be questions at the end. People have been telling me about some of the things they have been doing lately, (I see a lot of students and their families now with lessons online), and I am rather impressed. All sorts of good things are happening, it seems, and you should probably be quite proud of yourselves!
Here at the Priestley residence, shock has been registered at quite how busy you can find yourself when you can’t go to work as usual. If this should be what retirement is like, I’m not sure I’m fit enough for that yet. With so much to do, I’m having to get up earlier in the mornings, but I am enjoying it. And, what beautiful sunny mornings we are having!
There are so many things you could be doing to fill your time at home, it’s quite bewildering. The newest thing for us here is Reading Hour. Ever wonder how come you have accumulated so many wonderful books about all the things you are interested in, but rarely get around to reading? We’ve noticed that too, and have decided to do something about it. So, starting this week, we’ve introduced morning reading hour, a time after breakfast where we pick up something interesting, but not a story, and endulge our many interests while learning something useful. I’ll let you know how it’s going soon.
For me, the best thing about being at home is that it’s put me much closer to my hobbies. When at work, I am usually out of the house for about twelve hours most days, which doesn’t leave a lot of time to do the other things I like. How about you? What is it that you like to do more of now you are at home?
As our regular readers will already know, we are all about the positive here at NMA, and we would very much like you to share your thoughts with us on all of the good things you have found to do with your time now that you have more of it than usual. Why not write and tell us, so we can share your stories? Either list a few of the new things you have noticed, or things that you enjoy doing now that you didn’t do before, or even write a little piece, maybe 400 words or less, and if practical we will share it in our daily blog.
Please email your contribution to me at the usual Address – see ‘Contact’ Page.
21.04.20 – Darrell Priestley
Squirrels are early risers. Early on Sunday morning, as I was on garden watch, checking out the interactions of the bird life from the hidden vantage of my bedroom window, a squirrel hove into view, moving fitfully as it lazily circumnavigated our back garden. Squirrels are pretty nonchalant animals; nothing much seems to phase them, maybe because they are so agile, moving eratically but quickly when required. In about forty seconds it had traversed the rear perimeter, along the top of the fence, up and over the garden shed, then up into the big tree, going from branch to branch, ever upwards at a constant 30 degrees from the horizontal, somehow finding a connection with a smaller tree and down again at the same angle before heading over to the neighbours to continue the assault course. Totally madcap, but fun to watch. And the funny thing was, although it was still only early, I now found the energy not only to ditch the plan to go back to bed, but to burst forth and take on the day.
Parks are fabulous places, aren’t they? And leafy lanes. The world outside your window is really coming to life this spring, making you want to get out there and in amongst it. Where the world was previously open, lockdown has made what was once ordinary seem suddenly amazing. Time now to peer into that hedge and see if anything is moving in the spiders web. You want real life entertainment, with no CGI, explosions or car chases? That’ll be nature, then.
I like to look out of my window into the garden when doing my morning yoga. If nothing else, I enjoy the plants and flowers, which now especially are giving me a real zest to nurture living things, which just makes me feel good. I’m growing some lovely plants, and it still amazes me that for all the mistakes I have made many of them not only survive, they thrive. This year, there should hopefully also be a decent food crop, from a modest space that used to be a flower garden. But it also feels like I am getting to know the garden birds better. In my morning yoga session, while balancing on one leg, a blackbird swooped down for a drink and spent a good wee while peering in, wondering how long I could possibly hold the pose before falling over.
This spring, even the space outside my back door feels awesome. Ordinary things, all of a sudden, are imbued with extraordinary qualities. It is remarkable the extent to which distancing, and not going out, is enhancing the senses, making fresh air seem fresher, though the big reduction in pollution undoubtedly helps, colours appear more vibrant, and people suddenly more interesting, even though we now greet them from noticeably further away than usual. For all that the times are strange, and sometimes a little disconcerting, with a little imagination it’s possible to find your eyes opening wider and your mind’s horizons expanding considerably.
If you can get past the discomfort that a change to your familiar life brings, this might be an excellent time to develop or renew your interest in things you have hitherto neglected, or been too busy to think about. There is a world outside your window, and it may reward you handsomely to endulge yourself deeply and take a long, thoughtful look, and perhaps even be glad you had the time.
19.04.20 – Darrell Priestley
A month ago the very notion of teaching music online would not have appealed to me much. I love the immediacy of working with students, in real time, and have spent decades perfecting my own teaching techniques for maximum effectiveness; the idea of achieveing good results using the exact same techniques when teaching online is a challenging one. However, perhaps learning to adapt is in my DNA, as I am relishing the challenge of being just as effective teaching online as in the classroom. A slight shift in style, and a tweak to the technique.
For the student, the difference must be at least as great. Gone is the ease with which the teacher can demonstrate a new technique, or a refinement to existing techniques. The challenge for the teacher working online is to find other ways to instruct, that do not involve too much talking, because changing between processing spoken language and melody/harmony/rhythm/ and musical technique is quite demanding for the human brain, especially for younger students.
I began teaching online several weeks ago, bringing those of my students who pay by standing order on board first, since their monthly payments continued uninterrupted when we had to close for lockdown. So, while Eileen and I initially spent much of our time building a whole new business sytem to support online learning, I was also busy discovering how to be effective in entirely new ways, and meeting interesting challenges. Now we are ready to scale up, and the teachers are well under way in bringing the rest of our students into the new system.
In this new and different lesson environment, I have found that at some times it helps the student to focus more acutely on the written notation, and at other times on pure listening skills. At the same time, students are learning to be adaptable themselves, to focus more deeply, and to some extent to be more self reliant, as the teacher cannot support or direct them in quite the same way as they might in person.
One key thing which I had anticipated, and which is working out rather well in practice, is that students are getting better at preparing for each lesson. By getting warmed up at their instrument before the teacher joins them for the lesson, they are more receptive at the start. Then, at the end of the lesson, they are encouraged to continue working on any new skills and ideas while their memory is still fresh. Essentially, this is what happens normally when a student acquires a good practice habit, as memory and fluency develop and playing becomes much easier.
Three weeks into the online teaching exprience, I am pleased to report that students are uniformly making good progress. Though it might take a week or two for a student to adjust, the outlook is positive, and with all this time spent at home, music is proving to be a valuable way to monitor continued learning and development, simply by observing how much more fluently you are playing tunes at your instrument. Indeed, for good measure why not take full advantage of the situation, preparing a mini concert for everyone who lives with you, or even better an internet broadcast via Skype, Zoom or Teams to family members with whom you cannot mix at present. Everyone will love that!
Though for me nothing can quite equal teaching in person, it is remarkable how quickly people have adapted to the new situation. Teaching and learning are proving very effective, and I am certain that it helps us in this to know one another already. Teams software facilitates, rather than getting in the way, but the key to success is the existing working relationship between teacher and student, and I am delighted that technology can be put to use to support this relationship at a time such as this. It is genuinely wonderful to see my students again after a break, and to be welcomed into their homes, as it were. It only remains to say how much I am looking forward to seeing everyone again in person, and of course to playing duets once again in real time!