Since I moved to Kansas City last year, I’ve been teaching some music lessons, mostly whistle, some flute. While I have several private students, I could handle some more, and have been wondering about the practicality of teaching students over Skype(or equivalent) and webcam. Does anyone have experience with a setup like that?
I’m also looking for a guinea pig, someone willing to endure the frustration of working the bugs out, in exchange for a couple of free lessons.
Here’s a link to a rather foot-heavy MP3 of Pigeon On The Gate I made for one of my students a few weeks ago, as way of introduction: http://www.box.net/shared/03bi9tmha1
Rob Wynder and I did some testing with Skype based whistle lessons and found that the audio codec they are using really isn’t whistle friendly at all and is optimized for voice. Flute wasn’t so bad, but whistle just turned in all kinds of alias tones.
You might want to check out some of the other services out there. I’ve been using ustream.tv to do broadcasts that have both video and sound, and they are using a Flash 9 based audio codec that works great for both whistles and voice. Its a free service, you can broadcast to one person or a thousand, and since its all Flash and browser based, there is no software for your students to install, they just go to a website.
That’s useful information, will save me from wasting time. I looked at the ustream site, but didn’t see a way to use it for conversation, for two-way communication. That’s really what I’m after.
I did a search for Flash-based web-conferencing and came up with flashmeeting.com, which may be workable. As before, I still need a guinea pig, someone willing to play for me over the wire. Any takers?
how did this work out? if you still got some bugs, i would be happy to be a guinea pig! i just got a webcam, and i am looking to see how it works for music. email me if you’re still interested in a guinea pig to try out the connection and stuff.
