Music is the spice of life and learning it can make your days a lot more enjoyable. The art of playing music is all about rhythm and technique, which will allow you to come up with the best sounding tunes ever! Teaching all of these aspects for beginners can be a little tricky, especially if it’s done online. However, technology has helped numerous instructors and teachers, paving the way for them to properly break down the lessons and making it easy for students to understand. When lessons are easy, fun, and digestible, their progress is a lot faster.
Read on to learn about all of the effective and innovative tips that can help your online music class significantly.
Positivity and Fun
Students will not be engaged with you for long if you don’t have a positive attitude and fun nature. Music is art, but it’s all about fun as well. When you show them that you love what you do, you become a better role model. The positivity you display as you teach them can encourage them to be more engaged and happy to be there. When teachers seem too gloomy or uninterested, students will pick up on that and you will lose their attention. Monotony can make learning tedious, so make sure that you hype up your tone and use interactive methods while teaching. You need to show your students that you love what you do and make it come out naturally. If there’s a lot of material to grasp, you can decide on the pace and tempo of the class early on. Fill the class, whether virtual or physical, with positive vibes and try to make your students feel that you want to teach them because you care about their progress and future. Caring is the best way to connect with your students, which makes the lessons easier and more fun for them.
Have Easy Material
You must have easy material for your students to use. Online classes shouldn’t be difficult and your material needs to be easy to digest and read. Theoretical work is important because they can learn their notes from your sheets to properly understand what each note means. Music theory can help them improve at playing instruments and can help them follow instructions better. Learning notes is like a different language and you must make it fun, simple, and easy for them. Advice from several musicians and artists at HelloMusicTheory.com suggests that the study of music is all about practice. This means that if you want your students to learn music theory, give them simple sheets that are easy to follow and allow them the space to practice rather than compelling them to memorize the syllabus early on. Use the Screenshare feature to help them practice and memorize theorems easily. Practice always makes a student learn faster, whether it’s modulation, relative pitch, or diminished chords. A perfect set of sheets will make them ready for practical work and even your pop quizzes in class.
Practical Engagement is Key
Theoretical work is great but practical engagement is a lot better. It makes your students learn faster by practicing what they’ve read and learned from you. Music is more when it’s physically practiced. It’s not always about reading and writing constantly in every lesson, so make sure that you make your classes interactive and easy to follow, especially for beginners. You should also make sure to include fun, practical activities that they can do with their instruments, which allows your students to try out what they’ve learned and thus pick up on music theory swiftly and more efficiently. Pick fun tunes or songs that their generation knows, and give them the space to laugh and enjoy themselves while they learn. Presenting every musical element in a fun way, like a game, will always make what they learn stick. Your students won’t forget it so easily with this method because fun games always stay longer in their memory.
Encouragement and Patience
Teachers must have patience and they should always encourage their students no matter how hard it may be for some of them to pick up the pace. Even if they make mistakes, you must make it a safe environment by letting them know that it’s okay to play the wrong tune or read the wrong note. Having an encouraging presence will make them feel valued and appreciated. Use the “sandwich technique” with your feedback. Praising them, then pointing out something that they need to work on is always better than dryly critiquing their progress. This will increase engagement levels and you will find that they are always happy to learn something new from you.
Teaching requires preparation and patience. You won’t see changes or progress overnight, but that’s okay because the journey is about having fun with music. No one can become talented overnight. The art of music can’t be rushed because you need to practice and embrace it fully. Online learning is the future of education, giving millions of people the chance to learn from the comfort of their homes. Incorporate these techniques and steps into your lesson plan if you want to transform all your beginners and young musicians into future professionals.