Abstract:

It is common to learn to play an orchestral musical instrument through one-to-one lessons with an experienced tutor. For musicians who choose to study performance at an undergraduate level and beyond, their tutor is an important part of their professional musical development. For many musicians, travel is part of their professional lives due to touring, auditioning and teaching, often overseas. This makes temporary separation of students from their tutor inevitable. A solution used by some conservatoires is teaching via video conferencing, however the challenges of using video conference for interaction and collaborative work are well documented. The Remote Music Tuition prototype was designed to enhance music tuition via video conference by providing multiple views of the student. This paper describes the system, documents observations from initial tests of the prototype and makes recommendations for future developments and further testing.