videos of students?

[Sylvia]

I don’t teach, and I’m wondering if present-day teachers video their students to help them see and hear what they are doing. I wish we’d had video when I was a student …. tape recorders were barely starting to appear, and my teacher used one only once (it was reel-to-reel and not very practical). Later, when the small recorders came along, I started to record myself in practice and discovered a lot of things…like the difference between forced and loud, interesting things about my rhythm and tempos, etc.

[Allison Stevick]

I don’t teach harp, but I do sometimes use my iPad to take videos of myself playing. It helps me see and hear what I’m doing, and especially helps me remember not to scowl when I’m concentrating on a difficult part! I don’t want to look angry when I’m actually doing something I love, particularly when playing in public… 🙂

[Maya]

My vocal coach films every single lesson & gives it to me on a disk which is incredibly helpful as it’s easy for me to go back & look at certain exercises or pieces of music covered. I found it so helpful that I film myself practicing all my instruments to catch out any bad habits that need work. With voice however, the camera doesn’t need to focus in on any fingerings or the like. It’s much harder to set up a camera angle that gets a clear shot of both hands (not to mention feet) when harping, so unless you’re moving the camera & adjusting the zoom a lot, which is fairly intrusive to the lesson flow, the usefulness of filming an entire harp lesson is somewhat limited by comparison. My harp teacher has filmed me occasionally though, just on her phone doing a particular exercise in the correct way, then emails it to me so I have a reference.

I have to admit though, every time I use tech in a lesson, despite it’s usefulness it can also get quite distracting, fiddling with settings & the like. I’ve ended up on many tangents with my teacher about using different apps, which are all great but it does cut into actual playing time.

[loretta-o-driscoll]

I’ve started doing this with my ipad. It works particularly well with adults who can see what they are doing and correct it. Also very helpful to give a view of the LH from the other side of the strings.

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