Music students adjust to the rhythm of online learning
For Mia Barham, a first-year music student at Monash University, higher education has not been what she expected.
For Mia Barham, a first-year music student at Monash University, higher education has not been what she expected.
Barham is well into the first semester of her bachelor of music and secondary education, but the number of days she has been a student on campus — before the coronavirus closed the university — is exactly one.
It means that Barham has never met most of her fellow music students in the flesh, although she learns with them, joins them in tutorial discussions, plays music with them in a five-piece online ensemble, and sometimes even just hangs out with them in group chats.
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“It’s very weird,” she says. “And it will be very weird when we go back and say ‘I’ve been talking to you online for four months and haven’t met you before’.”
Music students have particular challenges with online learning, such as performing in a group. “It’s virtually impossible to play together online,” Barham says.
The small time delays in video calls mean a group of musicians can’t stay in time with each other. Which is why the five-piece jazz ensemble she is in has been doing things differently.
“You might do a solo with a backing track and then the group gives you feedback,” she says.
The university’s Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music, where Barham is studying, now puts together ensemble performances by asking each member to record their own part, and all the parts are then merged in a multi-track.
School head Cat Hope says they have been doing it with smaller ensembles and, as they gain experience, with larger bands and the school’s biggest performance ensemble — the Monash University Singers.
“We’ve turned our choir into a virtual choir,” Hope tells The Australian.
Being part of a virtual ensemble is a very different experience for players, but there are still important things students can learn, such as tuning, rhythm, tempo and sound quality.
Hope says it has been a significant challenge to take the school of music online in just a week.
But the school aims to offer as much as it can to its students, as well as the wider arts community, given the constraints of this lockdown period.
For example, the program of visiting artists is continuing, but they are performing online.
“We really believe that studying music at a time like this is good for our students,” Hope says.
One of the school’s priorities is to highlight Australian music, and Hope stresses that this will continue during the coronavirus restrictions.
The school has commissioned 10 “online experiences” focusing on Australian music — each no longer than 30 minutes — from people in the arts community who will create them at home. They are not necessarily a performance of music. They could be talks.
“I’m hoping this material will have a long life beyond this situation,” Hope says.
Meanwhile, students such as Barham will continue to learn and play at home.
“I’m hands-down so appreciative of what Monash is trying to do,” Barham says. “They are doing the absolute best they possibly can in a difficult situation.”
Her final word? “I’m just glad I’m not in Year 12.”
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