As all musicians know, the emergence of COVID-19 and the necessity for social distancing and quarantine brought many aspects of the music world to a complete halt. Orchestras, bands, Broadway musicals, and other performing arts groups around the world suddenly ended their concert seasons. In the midst of this new landscape, music schools continued to offer instruction to their students, which required a complete reconfiguration of the applied lesson (among many other things).
As my reality shifted along with everyone else’s, my new mode of communication with my students became the online lesson. I still had my students submit videos because the sound quality was vastly superior to what we experienced during online low brass lessons, so the lesson itself mainly became a way to check in and offer feedback. Since my semester ended I’ve had time to reflect on the successes and failures we experienced using this system. One of the main challenges in this instructional setting is maintaining our attention.
When students are in a face-to-face music lesson, attention is generally not an issue (I’m speaking mainly about college students). With a class size of one, students have no choice but to pay attention and be engaged. Both student and teacher are responsible for creating the content of the lesson, and we interact constantly. It is certainly possible for attention to wander, but the usual distractions (phone, computer, other people) are not present.
When applied lessons moved online, they brought one of our primary distractions (a screen) front and center. The novelty of teaching and experiencing lessons in our own homes, maybe even in our pajamas, wore off fairly quickly. We were left trying to maintain our productivity in a setting that removes us from the most important, engaging aspect of a music lesson: the completely analog experience of music itself. Additionally, we were now staring into the very screen that constantly wants to send us notifications to let us know what we’re missing while we’re in the lesson. It is important to note that this can create attention issues for both the student and the teacher. So how do we maintain our mental focus while experiencing a lesser version of music through a screen?
I had an interesting lesson recently with a middle school euphonium student. I had sent him some music to work on, but he had to use his tablet to view the music. This meant that he could keep the Zoom meeting going, but we lost video. I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of teaching a student I couldn’t see, but in the moment there wasn’t another way around it. We proceeded with the lesson, and I found that an interesting change occurred in my attention. With no student on the screen, I was forced to really focus in on what I heard. I found myself closing my eyes and listening with more intensity because I didn’t have any visual stimulus. My student also had to do the same when I was speaking or playing for him. I was unable to comment on anything I might have seen in his playing, like posture, breathing habits, or facial setup. But I was able to be more specific about everything I could hear (even with how bad low brass sounds on Zoom) because my ears were so plugged in.
Many of us are finding that platforms like Zoom give us a way to connect with students, colleagues, friends, and family right now while we can’t see people in person. But many of us have also had frustrating experiences with online communication, especially in situations with more than a few people in the same meeting. I recently spoke to my mother on the phone and she reminded me that even though we had visually seen each other in our weekly family Zoom hangouts, we hadn’t really had the chance to speak and catch up in more detail. A regular old phone call gave us so much more of a connection than a Zoom call during which we could see each other.
We already know a few things about attention. We know that when we eliminate stimuli around us, we are better able to focus on our current task. Eliminating the sense of sight so that the sense of hearing becomes more attuned is an extreme example of this. Simply removing screens from the room while working used to be a way to accomplish this, before our entire lives revolved around screens! But we also know that attention is a skill that doesn’t necessarily come to us easily. It needs to be developed with practice. And during a time when the way we go about our daily lives and interact with others has completely changed, that practice may need to be adjusted.
Many of us have made adjustments instinctively. I’ve heard from colleagues who have begun taking notes and keeping records on paper (imagine that!) so that they can get their eyes off of a screen for any amount of time. This also probably helps them maintain their attention as well. Consciously adopting practices that develop our focus can help us to achieve the mental clarity and fight the “brain fog” that many of us have struggled with in this new environment.
My experience teaching a purely audio lesson made me realize that one of the issues with experiencing music (and life) online is that audio and visual stimuli together can be overwhelming. Recently I have begun to seek out audio and visual experiences separately as way to better focus on each type of experience. In general, the practice of mindfulness asks us to focus on one thing at a time. How many times are we listening to music while doing absolutely nothing else? How many visual experiences do we have without audio?
I have found that I can gain and maintain focus by creating either pure audio or pure visual experiences. For me this means either listening to music while doing absolutely nothing else (preferably with my eyes closed) or drawing/coloring in a quiet room while doing absolutely nothing else. I have found that pure audio experiences are more calming and centering for me than pure visual experiences (maybe this is why I’m a musician). But in both cases I gain focus and mental clarity, often times in 10 minutes or less.