We’re excited to announce the launch of a new iOS app for finding your perfect music teacher online. The app is called MusicMonde and it matches up music students with a teacher for online video lessons via Skype or FaceTime.
MusicMonde is available to download now for free from the iTunes App Store!
Millions of people around the world are keen to learn music but for a variety of reasons never begin taking lessons, or begin and then find they are forced to give up. The new MusicMonde app, brainchild of UK organist John Foreman, is designed to help more people succeed in their music learning and enjoy the full range of benefits that becoming a musician offers.
The problem with traditional music learning
Musicians have successfully learned to play instruments in one-on-one lessons for hundreds of years.
So what’s the problem?
Well, there are still many more people who want to learn music than actually do, and there are some significant barriers which can hold you back. If you are fortunate enough to have time, money, flexibility, and live in a city with a large number of music teachers, taking instrument lessons is easy. Take away any of these factors though, and it becomes much trickier!
The solution: learn music online. There’s a wealth of great resources you can use, from sites like this for ear training, Dave Conservatoire for music theory, The Music Arrangers Page for arrangement or DLP music books for instrument lessons.
If you are fortunate enough to have time, money, flexibility, and live in a city with a large number of music teachers, taking instrument lessons is easy.
Take away any of these factors though, and it becomes much trickier!
These sites are wonderful but they don’t quite provide the one-on-one personal feedback you need when learning an instrument. Fortunately there are some projects ushering in a new era of learning music online, such as TheZOEN, previously featured here on EasyEarTraining.com.
With the new MusicMonde app we hope to help bring online video instrument lessons to more and more music students worldwide.
Problem #1: Time
Whether you’re a high school student with an overload of homework and after-school activities, a young professional swamped with work obligations, or a parent struggling to find personal time while taking care of the kids, it can be challenging to carve out the time for regular music lessons. And of course regular lessons are essential to make progress learning music.
When you take music lessons online, you have far more flexibility about the time of your lessons and you save time spent travelling to your teacher or waiting while their last lesson finishes. You can more easily arrange last-minute lessons, or even find a teacher in a different timezone who could easily provide lessons early morning or late at night to suit you.
Problem #2: Money
Learning music can be expensive – but trying to save money by learning from a bad teacher or someone who isn’t qualified to teach will do you more harm than good! Especially if you’re learning music as a beginner. With the traditional approach, you have little choice but to pay expensive fees…
With Skype or FaceTime music lessons, you have a much wider selection of music teachers from around the world, and because the teachers have a wider market of students and more flexibility about how they offer lessons, they can offer lower rates than for traditional in-person lessons. This means the student can pay a lower price to take lessons with a qualified expert while still making it well worthwhile for the teacher.
Problem #3: Location
In the internet age we are often frustrated when we find ourselves limited by geography. We expect to access anything from anywhere in the world at the touch of a button. Why should instrument lessons be any different?
While there are some instances where it’s important to have in-person physical feedback on your instrument, the vast majority of a teacher’s feedback is given through listening, speaking and demonstrating. All of these can be done perfectly well via a video link across the globe. In fact, sometimes just being able to telephone or email the right mentor can help you overcome hurdles and dispell confusion.
The vast majority of a teacher’s feedback is given through listening, speaking and demonstrating.
All of these can be done perfectly well via a video link across the globe.
When you take Skype music lessons you get all the personal feedback you would from a teacher in the same room as you, even though that teacher may be on the other side of the world.
You can also take group lessons using a video conference tool like Google Hangouts, and be far better matched with students who have similar musical interests and abilities than if you just joined a group lesson locally.
Problem #4: Special Interests
Even if you are blessed with time, money and a good location, there is still one big issue which faces music students today: what if you want to learn an unusual instrument?
Finding a guitar teacher or piano lessons in a big city is easy enough. But what if you want to learn bagpipes – but don’t live in Scotland? What if you want to learn to play your church organ – but nobody within hundreds of miles of you has ever played the organ before? How can you find the expert tuition you need to learn the instrument?
It’s one of the wonders of music that it can be so universal yet have such a variety of strange, unexpected and truly delightful specialities. Whether you want to learn a strange instrument from a foreign country, dive deep into a rare musical genre, or hone your composition skills to create a masterpiece of your own, there is a teacher out there who can help you. Unfortunately the chances are that they don’t live in your town!
With online music lessons you can identify, contact and set up personalised lessons with the specialised expert to mentor you to your full musical potential.
Finding a teacher for online music lessons
“Great!” you’re probably thinking, “but how do I actually find this perfect music teacher for online lessons?!”
We’ll come back to that in a moment…
Earlier this year I met a man who actually had the opposite problem. Having studied the organ for many years John Foreman was keen to pass on his knowledge and expertise to a new generation. The problem? There weren’t any keen organ students living near him in Somerset!
John got in touch because he’s an avid user of our RelativePitch app and as we talked it emerged that he was keen to teach organ and had a clear vision for how it could happen. He’d been using FaceTime on his iPhone and knew that if he could be matched up with organ students this could be an excellent and convenient way to teach.
Although the idea was a bit outside Easy Ear Training’s regular focus on listening skills, John’s passion for combining music education and modern technology resonated strongly and we’ve spent the last few months working together to plan and develop the new MusicMonde app for iPhone. We’re proud and excited to finally share it with you today.
The MusicMonde app
The MusicMonde vision is to provide first-rate music education to students around the world by taking advantage of modern internet technology. John has a huge number of exciting initiatives in mind for the future of this new online music school, but we decided to keep it simple to begin with!
The new MusicMonde app for iPhone is a match-making tool. Anyone who is interested in learning music can download the app for free and explore the directory of music teachers inside, each of whom offers internet lessons.
Perhaps you’re an intermediate-level guitar player, or a concert pianist. You might be a music major at college who needs to brush up on music theory. Or maybe you are a complete beginner in music but have always dreamed of learning the organ.
By downloading the app you have taken your first steps to easy, convenient, affordable and high quality music lessons online.
The next step is to browse the teacher profiles, where you can learn about their background, what subjects and instruments they teach, how they offer lessons (via Skype or FaceTime, or by telephone/email consultation) and what price they charge.
Once you’ve found the right teacher for you just use the “Contact” button to get in touch with them and arrange your first lesson. Some even offer the first lesson for free.
Currently the app features a select group of music instructors (including a couple of faces that will be familiar if you’re a regular EasyEarTraining.com reader!) but already covers a range of instruments and subjects including organ, piano, double bass, cello, flute, singing, music theory and composition – and we will be adding new teachers regularly. If you don’t immediately find the right match, you can use the “Contact” button to let us know what you’re looking for.
Get started with MusicMonde
The new app is now available for free in the App Store worldwide.
If you want to find a teacher for online music lessons, download the app today!
→ Are you a teacher who offers online lessons?
We’d love to talk to you! Just send us an email at [email protected].
→ Love the idea but don’t have an iPhone?
Want to know when MusicMonde is available on Android or the web? Email [email protected] to request early access.
There are many exciting initiatives in online music education today and we hope the MusicMonde app will become a useful part of this wonderful new ecosystem by helping more students find their perfect music teacher online. Give it a try!
