PanFluteForums.org: iChat Guitar Lessons

Well, Troy and I just finished another guitar lesson via iChatAV and it went very well. We were able to cover technique, harmony and do some improvising. Considering Troy was on an iBook G3 (900mhz), the quality was still good enough to be effective. G5's are in the offing, however :-)

We opted to use headphones mainly to eliminate any feedback delays that occur when the iSight mic picks up the incoming audio and sends it back out the pipes. A side effect of using headphones is that you can't hear yourself talk at normal levels- hence, you tend to shout at the other person! Pulling one phone off an ear helps.

Because we like to see each other's face when talking AND have a view of the left and right hands on the instrument, we have to sit back from the iSight quite a bit. This makes it a little difficult to view fingering details. As such, we have to move in close to the iSight when necessary. A solution might be to have two computers set up with iSights -- one trained on the hands, the other on the face -- then use the multi-user iChat version to be released with Mac OS X - codenamed "Tiger" some time next Spring (iChat under Tiger will support 4 users simultaneously). Until then, we have to do a little standup routine every time we want to zoom in on details. Not bad, though.

Audio was clear and tone quality not bad at all considering we were not operating at iChat's highest quality resolution.

Jamming is a bit of an issue due to delays. If I play a rhythm track for Troy to solo over, I just need to make sure I'm in time and not trying to adjust to his interpretation of the beat. On his end, it will sound perfect. On my end, depending on the delay, it can sound off, of course.

If I want to convey something on paper, I scribe it, then display it on the camera - or, i send a PDF via iChat text mode. When using Sibelius, I can send notation in a similar fashion.

I didn't find asking Troy to adjust hand positions to be difficult via iChat -- not much different than if a student were sitting before me. However, demonstrating fingerings is a bit more challenging due to resolution and quality. If I move directly in front of the camera and put my hands within a foot or so of the lens, then things are crisp, clear and perspective seems to be ok. I think if we were on G5's , we would get a better image and not have to resort to such physical maneuvering. (A better upload speed would also be extremely beneficial).

All in all, the lessons are effective -- material is vended, understood .. and per usual, it's up to the student to go and "do it". Most of the time, you forget you are going over IP and you carry on as though you were working in a studio.

Oh -- someone thought I might be working on a "Mac project". While it's true that I do write software using Apple's Cocoa/Objective-C dev tools (the best there is !), I'm not affiliated with Apple. I've written a developer's tool that helps with memory management ( KevinCallahan-Accessorizer ) and have a little music theory app I use with my students which drills degrees of scales.

-Kevin