 Our first trial run was difficult. I was left wanting to ship the keyboard
home. We spent more time fussing with
the computer and the webcam than we did playing piano. It was tough!
First of all, our set up was all wrong.
In one place the piano was too high, in another it was too low. We resorted to stacking pillows on the chair
to raise our little guy to the right height.
With that problem temporarily solved we tried to get our camera pointed
in the right direction. Our poor teacher
was probably getting sea sick from all the motion. When we finally settled on the best location
for the camera, of course there was nothing around to hook it to, so my husband
had to stand there holding it, like a statue.
It was actually kind-of funny.
Then the lesson. Skype locked up
our computer 3 times in the first 10 minutes.
Finally, when we were at our wit's end, our teacher suggested another
service called ooVoo. She was trying to explain to us how her
brother-in-law used it often for business calls when the Skype locked us up
again. All we heard was, "my
brother-in-law, my brother-in-law, my brother-in-law, my brother-in-law, my
brother-in-law." Then the phone
rang. That was the end of Skype.
We registered with ooVoo and tried again a couple of days
later. The video feed was much smoother
and the sound quality was pretty good.
There were a few "hiccups" where we lost Ms. Suzie's voice and couldn't
understand her instructions, but overall it went well. We made it through an entire lesson. At the beginning of the lesson Griffin was
ready to give up. "This is too hard," he
complained. It's true...it is hard, and
not what he's used to, but about half way through the lesson he started to get
into the music - trying to figure out the new pieces and laughing. If we can work the kinks out I think it'll be
worth it. For now, we'll try a lesson
every 2 weeks. Just enough to give him
an incentive to keep playing and help him remember what he's learned. I have to say, I'm very impressed with our
teacher. She can tell when he's playing
the wrong note just by listening to him, and she can tell which note he played
instead of the one he should have played.
"Watch the 3rd measure.
That's a G not a C." Wow! That's talent!
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