Published 2025-04-22.
Last modified 2025-04-23.
Time to read: 4 minutes.
av_studio collection.
I have been thinking about taking more music lessons and teaching again. I started teaching music in 1973, when I taught classical guitar at a music store in Ottawa. Since then, I have learned to play several other instruments rather well. I have taught a lot of computer science, but no music since the mid-1970s. My priorities have shifted.
Teaching music part-time is generally fun; however, the music teachers I have known who have taught music full-time found it to be a grind. Teaching computer science commercially paid a lot better than being a faculty member in a university or community college, but I always enjoyed the interaction.
As a teacher and as a student, I prefer in-person lessons. This limits students to the teachers who live nearby, and teachers are also limited to the students who live nearby. This limitation has been holding me back, and I want to become a better musician regardless of the limitations of my immediate surroundings.
I wanted an online presence that I could use for both teaching and learning.
I did not want to use a phone app because I hate using mobile phones for anything except talking and navigation.
lessonface.com seemed to be a website that fit my needs quite well.
Lessonface
Pricing is set in USD, which means at present that Canadians experience prices 40% higher than US residents. For example, teachers that advertise $30 USD/hour actually cost me $42 CAD/hour.
After signing up, I wrote up a
learning goal
on Lessonface.com.
My goal was to improve the quality of the lowest and highest notes that I could play on the saxophone
without getting into altissimo.
As I saved the learning goal, I allowed it to be shown to all interested saxophone teachers.
The act of sharing the learning goal with a potential teacher created an inquiry.
In all, a dozen teachers responded to my inquiry, at which time I turned off the inquiry.
Inquiries can be restarted.
Each response from a teacher displayed a link so I could view the teacher’s profile.
Teacher profiles display their rates.
I also did a search for saxophone teachers on the website and found some interesting teachers in Latin American countries who cost much less than teachers based in Canada and the US. I learned to play pan pipes in 1993 from a Chilean Indian who had emigrated to Vancouver. His English was so-so, so he mostly communicated with me in Spanish. I feel comfortable learning saxophone from another Latine.
Eight teachers responded within two hours. Of these, seven were highly qualified, and the eighth said he was not qualified. After 24 hours, I had received a dozen responses, and almost all were supremely qualified. One respondent was a saxophone professor at Berklee College of Music! One day, I would like to get to the point where I would benefit from learning from such incredible teachers. My immediate goal was quite modest, so I did not feel the need to spend the premium that they so clearly deserved.
When scheduling the first lesson, I was pleased to see the available times shown in my timezone. Students pay in advance. The website appears to have been well thought out, and it was quite responsive. Videoconferencing uses Zoom. Any paid non-trial lesson on Lessonface can be reviewed.
Total time that I spent going from Hey, I wonder if I could find an online sax teacher? to having a dozen incredible candidates to choose from: 20 minutes.
I feel confident that I could have chosen any of the teachers, and they would all have been excellent choices.
After scheduling and paying for the lesson, it showed up in my account on lessonface.com.
Preparing for the Lesson
I felt that wearing headphones would be essential for a successful video lesson.
The day before the lesson, I started the Zoom app and pressed the settings icon.
I did not start Zoom by clicking on the link shown for the lesson
because when Zoom is launched that way you do not have access to the Zoom Settings menu.
Instead, I pressed Windows, typed zoom, and pressed Enter.
Once the Settings menu of the Zoom app was displayed I visited the Video and Audio tabs to ensure that my microphone and camera were set up properly, that the lights were properly positioned, and the headphones were ready.
I then configured the Zoom client via Settings / Audio Profile / Original sound for musicians, and enabled High fidelity music mode and Echo cancellation.
Under Settings / Recording set the location for recordings to %userprofile%\ and
disabled Choose a location for recorded files when the meeting ends.
I never remember why I am being asked to save a video after a meeting ends and often just hit Esc when prompted.
This causes me to lose the recording.
Better to just let the default location ride.
Under Settings / Keyboard shortcuts I enabled global shortcut CTRL-ALT-R for Start/stop recording to computer.
I turned off background blur, because that filter caused my fingers to often appear blurred. I also reset the zoom and set FoV to 90 degrees on my Logitech Brio camera via Logitune. I also enabled dual screen view on Zoom because I have more than one monitor.
The Lesson
I put my phone on do not disturb mode, then signed into the lesson half an hour early and checked everything out. I left everything on and did other things until the teacher appeared. He was 2 minutes late, but the lesson lasted 9 minutes longer than I paid for. I played for him and demonstrated the problems I was having. His advice was thoughtful, thorough and useful.
The only technical problem we had was introduced by Zoom, which was unable to cope effectively with the difference in volume between normal speech and a saxophone. As a result, much of what the teacher played was cut off, or was badly distorted. For my lesson, this was not a serious problem, but we would not have been able to play together.
After the lesson, I took my phone off Do Not Disturb mode and noticed that an email had arrived from Lessonface, inviting me to leave reviews of the lesson and the Lessonface platform.
😁 😁Money well spent!
