Get Back to Playing the Music You Love
Director of global business development for ArtistWorks' music education online, James Taylor, talks with Slow Living Radio about how our education technology can help you learn music online and get back to playing the music you love.
Slow Living Radio, which helps you uncork the great life and reclaim your time, asks James how ArtistWorks can get you back to playing the music of your youth.
"We have this platform called Video Exchange which allows some of the world's greatest artists and teachers to teach you directly from the comfort of your own living room.
The teachers have "an extensive video curriculum with multiple angles." When you have practiced that video or technique, you can submit a video to your teacher, whose "personalized video response giving you feedback to improve as a player is seen by the entire music community.
"What happens is that when someone would join one of our [online music courses], they work their way through our curriculum. If I'm a guitar player, I can choose multiple camera angles. I can do slowmos. I can do looping.
Students then send their teacher a video, whether through iPhone, iPad, or Kindle Fire. "The teacher then films a personalized video response back," such as, "'Hi John, that's great! You just have to work a bit on vibrato.'
"Our [Video Exchange Learning] platform allows [our artists] to film their video response from anywhere in the world. They might be in Tokyo playing a concert with Herbie Hancock but someone living in Utah is now being brought into the life of a traveling musician that way.
"If you want to learn percussion, now you can with Luis Conte, the drummer with Madonna and Carlos Santana. Our platform [Video Exchange Learning] breaks down the geographic barrier for someone to learn a musical instrument. It's like learning soccer from David Beckham.'
Video Exchange Learning "allows these great teachers to teach anyone regardless of their geographic location or time. Our Grammy-award winning artists give you confidence that you're learning the right way. Watching DVDs or YouTube videos is one-way learning. We learn by feedback.
"What's really powerful is when you have a community of people passionate about learning together around the same instrument. I see three-star generals from the Pentagon learning along 14-year-old Hungarian…kids. It's like one giant online masterclass."
Students can "send in as many videos as they want, really. It just depends on where they are in their learning. What also happens is that students are not just watching the teachers' videos. They also watch the other students' videos and say, 'That's exactly the same issue I'm having!'
"We're now the biggest provider of online music education in bluegrass, one of the biggest in jazz, and now moving into rock and classical.
"We have students in 58 countries around the world and by the end of the year will have launched our 30th online school.
"The reason we can do that is because of our founder, David Butler, who saw traditional institutions charging a lot for what they were doing and asked 'How can we get the cost of music education as low as possible?'
For as low as $20.00 a month, you can get back to the music you love and become the player you deserve to be.
All you need is the desire to play.
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