
However, research conducted during the pandemic suggests that teaching students how to play instruments online can offer music teachers the chance to redefine curriculum, set new goals for students and consider new criteria for evaluation.įor students who have access to instruments at home, music teachers can use a flexible accompaniment app like SmartMusic. As school budgets are always stretched, it’s important for programs to be very inexpensive or preferably free. This often leaves online tools as the default. Instrument-free musicĭuring the pandemic, most school-based music teachers have faced the challenge that elementary students don’t have access to instruments at home. Going online has forced music educators to adapt existing ideas, or adopt existing technology, to discover, invent and share ways to reach students to keep music education alive. However, as many teachers and students have discovered in the last two years of on-and-off virtual school, music lessons during the pandemic have unearthed some pleasant surprises. As a music educator, I’d hazard that few school music teachers would opt to teach their students remotely.

Whether teaching how to play a musical instrument, or how to sing, teachers rely on learners’ physical cues to help them progress - cues that are often obscured either by watching someone on a screen or listening through a microphone. Learning to make music is a full mind-and-body activity.


Blob Opera, developed by Google and AI artist David Li, lets students manipulate a soprano, alto, tenor and bass quartet of blobs.
