Bridging the Digital Divide of Music Education
Back in the day, you didn’t have a lot of options if you wanted to learn how to play guitar. They didn’t teach it in band. No guitar instructional CDs, DVDs or software. No internet. No tab. And there were very few instructional books available focused on the other popular styles of the day.
Younger players today couldn’t even imagine a world without all of the learning resources available today. How did so many millions of us manage to learn the instrument? We studied with local instructors. We learned from our buds. We’d jam and interact with other musicians every chance we got. And what we learned, we passed on to others.
Today we have more options than Carter’s got liver pills (If you don’t recognize that saying, then you were just a sparkle in your momma’s eyes back in the day referenced above). You can stock your library with thousands of instructional books, CDs, DVDs, software, apps and the like. You can feast on YouTube or hook up with online companies like TrueFire and tap into thousands of on-demand lessons. The digital age is a dream come true for musicians. But there’s a down side.
Yes, we have incredible resources at our fingertips, but we’ve lost touch with each other. We now learn in isolation. The information flows from our desktop and mobile screens in a single direction. There’s no one to tell us what we did right or what we did wrong. There’s no one to motivate us. There’s no mentoring. We’re that family in a restaurant mesmerized by their own phones. The digital divide.
Technology may have spawned the divide, but it will also bridge it. Private guitar lessons online, Skype lessons, video messaging, online jamming, and video chat webinars are all just now becoming recognized as viable ways for students to interact with instructors, well as with other students.
Pick one of these platforms and give it a go. Somewhere out there in the wide blue yonder is your ideal instructor and mentor. And now they make house calls.
