How Online Classes Present Difficulties for Music Students
By Kelly Magee
Many students have had struggles adjusting to online classes over Zoom at this time. But online classes create some more unique obstacles for music students.
Jamie Kaufman, a Vocal Performance Major at University of the Arts in Philadelphia, expresses how Zoom classes have completely changed the look of her education.
Kaufman takes 18 credits, and only one of her classes is not a music class. All of her music classes are on Zoom, and a lot of her classes are learning to play instruments.
“I have clarinet and saxophone meeting on Zoom and we don’t even have saxophones. So we’re learning saxophone fingerings on our clarinets,” Kaufman said. “And guitar has been really hard over Zoom. We used to play songs together in class, but we can’t do that now because there’s a lag online. The first class on Zoom, we tried to all play together and it was a train wreck. So what we do now is the teacher plays, and we all play too but on mute, and we just hear him.”
Kaufman performs in a women’s ensemble and a choir and they have not been able to continue on Zoom. Instead they have been watching videos of other ensembles, which she has enjoyed, but Kaufman is a performance major, and she is not performing at all.
Many of her classes completely changed their syllabus to adjust to online learning. Her jury, a performance-based exam, was simplified because there are aspects of performing that cannot be done over Zoom.
“My jury, I was going to have to do a bunch of scales and sight reading, and prepare six songs. Now I only have to prepare three. I only have to sing four major scales and obviously, you can’t really sight read through a video, so I’m not doing any sight reading,” Kaufman said.
Kaufman also minors in music education, with the goal of pursing it for her master’s degree, so she has considered what it must be like to be a music teacher right now.
“I don’t think I would do anything differently than they’re doing. They’re all trying the best that they can,” Kaufman said.
The benefit of doing schoolwork at home now is that she has more time to practice and it has helped her do better in her classes.
However, her school changed all grading to pass or fail, which has hindered her motivation.
“People aren’t working as hard. We don’t have to. We don’t have to work hard for good grades because we just have to pass. So my motivation isn’t there. I’m not working half as hard as I was when I was at school,” Kaufman said.