Music teachers returning to in-person lessons after more than a year of Zoom-ing

Jun. 26—Some music teachers are turning off their Zoom cams and getting back to the tradition of being in the same room with their music students — where they can see everything from the tapping of a foot to the fingering on a fretboard, keyboard or saxophone.

Others are holding onto distance learning for its convenience and safety. And still others are doing both.

"When the COVID shutdown hit last year, I took a week off of teaching and kind of freaked out for a minute," recalled Jay Smith, a working musician, composer, bandleader and recording artist who, besides performing live, was providing piano lessons to 60 students a week.

Smith soon got busy adapting to the changes brought about by the pandemic. After much trial and error, he began to get more comfortable teaching keyboard to students who were at home, miles away.

"I like to be comfortable. I never would have done this unless I was forced to," he said.

The pandemic being what it was, Smith was pushed out of his comfort zone, and forced to innovate. Pretty soon, other music teachers were calling him for tips and advice.

"People were asking me, 'What about this Zoom-thing?'" he said.

"Now I'm doing both Zoom and in-person lessons," Smith said Thursday. "I have the perfect set-up: two cameras ... and my piano is plugged into an audio interface."

Like Smith, music teacher Whitney Herbst is a working musician. But rather than focusing on jazz, Latin, rock and soul, her forte is classical. Herbst plays double bass in the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra.

Adapting to online teaching "was definitely a learning curve," she said.

Meanwhile, performances in front of live audiences ended abruptly, as did her volunteer work at local schools.

The very infrastructure of the local musical landscape seemed to be in danger of collapse. Live music, except for those who performed via video, was prohibited. To borrow a musical term, school bands seemed to be resting.

But there was more going on beneath the surface.

Herbst never imagined that she would one day be teaching exclusively online.

"Now I have a whole new skill-set," she said. But first, she had to innovate, too.

She had students set a metronome, "because you sometimes get a lag on Zoom."

And she recorded separate videos and sent them to students showing close-ups of her finger work on the bass.

On Thursday, Herbst was in a private studio at Bakersfield Music Lessons, a new endeavor which Smith founded and opened earlier this year. The venue for music lessons boasts several private practice rooms with professional music teachers offering lessons on guitar; violin and viola; standup bass and bass guitar; piano; drums; saxophone; and more.

"I love it," Herbst said. "The room is just big enough to fit two stand-up basses. I call it dueling basses."

Innovation and adaptation became the name of the game all over in the music ecosystem. Local singer-songwriters were holding intimate weekly performances on Facebook. Five-piece bands were sharing video performances.

Jim Scully, a composer and music educator at Cal State Bakersfield, said music programs across the city were faced with unprecedented challenges over the past year.

"The thing we all love doing was basically impossible to do in its traditional form," he said.

Unable to perform live, they adapted.

"My CSUB jazz students ended up composing tunes in our weekly meetings that we will perform this year," Scully said. "While it wasn't optimal, it did allow for different instruction about writing and arranging music that is hard to focus on with the push to rehearse so much for live concerts."

It was an opportunity to try things that he had always wanted to do but simply didn't fit into a normal schedule.

"As a result, I will do things a little differently going forward, but I'm eagerly anticipating a return to in-person rehearsals in the fall, which is the tentative plan with CSUB Jazz," he said.

For Stockdale High School student Gavin Hua, who has experienced in-person and Zoom saxophone lessons with music teacher and Bakersfield sax man Paul Perez, in-person is clearly superior.

"It's not an ideal situation to be online," he said.

"I am beyond fortunate," he said about going back to in-person lessons.

Indeed, on Thursday, teacher and student were discussing the relative merits of different reeds, the way various mouthpieces darken the sound or brighten it to a gleaming edge, and the importance of nuance.

As Perez watched and listened, it was clear he could pick up on that nuance in the close quarters of the studio environment.

"He has perfect pitch, so he uses his ear more than his intellect," Perez said later. "I'm trying to balance that out."

As tough as the past year has been for students, and music students in particular, CSUB's Scully said to place it in context, one must consider the alternative.

"I don't think we suffered, per se," he said. "I think we did what was best for all involved. We adapted while still delivering instruction that helped students grow.

"Those who suffered are the hundreds of thousands who lost their battle with COVID," he said. "I'm very proud that the CSU stayed almost entirely virtual for the whole year to help minimize the spread of the virus."

It was surely a difficult decision, he said, but one that put the safety and health of students and faculty first.

Reporter Steven Mayer can be reached at 661-395-7353. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter: @semayerTBC.