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Online music lessons offer major advantages to your students, private lesson teachers, and your school's booster program.
Students can take lessons much more conveniently from home, while enjoying studio quality audio and while retaining the ability to play live in sync with their instructor. Students can take lessons from the best teacher vs. settling for someone who lives close by. Parents don't have to leave work early to drive students to and from lessons during rush hour, while carting siblings along to lessons. A 30-minute lesson is just a 30-minute lesson, not a 90-minute expedition. And students can record lessons to refer back to them later.
Teachers can now provide lessons to students nearly anywhere, rather than being constrained to students who live within a 30-minute drive. Teachers don't have to spend as much time driving to schools and to students' homes as they do teaching, so they can travel less, teach more, and earn more. And teachers can provide instruction to students from underserved schools that are located in areas that are more difficult to reach.
Even the booster program benefits, as JamKazam funnels a portion of lesson fees back into the music program booster fund, helping to pay for trips, instrument repairs, and other music program expenses - all without students selling things, and without additional time or effort expended by the music program director.
Some teachers and students have historically tried using Skype to power online lessons, but have found that the lesson experience is significantly diminished. Why? Because Skype and similar apps were built for voice chat – not to deliver online music lessons. This is a major problem. Voice technology processes all audio as if it were a spoken human voice, which makes music sound awful in online sessions – so bad that teachers can’t assess the student’s tone and sometimes even the pitch of what they are playing. These apps also have very high latency – a technical term that means that the student and teacher cannot play together, another important requirement for productive lessons. Since Skype wasn’t built for music, it also lacks many other basic features to support effective lessons, like a metronome, mixers, backing tracks, etc.
At JamKazam, we’ve spent years designing, patenting, and building technology specifically to enable musicians to play online live in sync with studio quality audio. We’ve built a wide variety of critical online music performance features into this platform. And now we’ve built a lesson marketplace on top of this foundation, and crafted a partner program specifically to meet the needs of secondary education music programs. The bottom line is that your students, private lesson teachers, and your music program's booster fund can now all "win" by adopting this amazing new Internet service. And you don't have to do it all at once. You can simply make this available as an option to students and parents who decide this is a good fit for them and will help them.
If this sounds interesting to you, read on to learn more about some of the top features of JamClass by JamKazam.
Teacher and student need to be able to play together to enable effective lessons. As any teacher who has attempted to teach using Skype will tell you, Skype doesn't let you play together. JamKazam's patented technologies deliver on this requirement at an amazing level. Click the video above to watch 6 bands play together from different locations to see our tech in action. And for an even more impressive feat, watch this video with a band playing together from Austin, Atlanta, Chicago, and Brooklyn using JamKazam tech.
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Skype was built for voice - for people talking with each other. It uses something called a "voice codec". This just means it processes all audio as a spoken human voice, and the result is that music, whether instrumental or vocal, sounds very bad in Skype, as it has been processed through tech built for talking. JamKazam delivers very high quality audio. You will be amazed at how good it sounds. It sounds like you're sitting next to each other playing. This is also critical for a good lesson. Poor audio is hard to endure in lessons.
Many times a student thinks they've got it during a lesson, but they get home and realize "I don't got it", and then they've wasted a week. In JamClass, you can easily record lessons to refer back to them later. Students can also use our app to record their performances, upload them to YouTube, and share with them the music program director.
Teachers can also use JamTracks to further motivate the student by letting them play with songs they love. JamKazam offers a catalog of 3,700+ popular songs. Each song is is a complete multi-track recording, with fully isolated tracks for each instrument and part of the music. So a student can listen to just the part they're learning in isolation, turn around and mute that one part to play along with the rest of the band, slow down playback for practice, record and share their performances, and more. It's really fun! And a great way to keep your students motivated and engaged.
When your music program adopts JamClass, you can easily live broadcast video and audio of student recitals and even full band performances through YouTube - FREE. This enables other students, parents, grandparents, and friends to "tune in" for these performances even if they cannot attend in person. This can also be a great way to inspire and attract younger students in feeder schools without transporting your entire band or orchestra for remote performances.
The free JamKazam app lets you easily apply VST & AU plugin effects to your live performance in lessons. For example, guitarists can apply popular amp sims like AmpliTube to get any kind of guitar tone without pedal boards or amps, and vocalists can apply effects like reverb, pitch correction, etc.
The free JamKazam app also lets you use MIDI instruments in online lesson sessions. For example, keys players can use MIDI keyboard controllers with VST & AU plugins to generate traditional piano sounds, Rhodes electric piano, Hammond organ, and other classic keys tones. And drummers who use electronic kits can use their favorite plugins to power their percussive audio.
There are many other features that are specifically useful for online lessons built into JamClass by JamKazam, including a metronome feature, the ability for either teacher or student to open any audio file and use it as a backing track for session acccompaniment, and too many more to list.
In addition to the lesson features, an awesome bonus is that once your students are set up to play with your teachers in online lessons, they can also play completely FREE with anyone else in the JamKazam community any time to use the skills they’re learning in lessons to play with others, which again reinforces and motivates students to stay engaged, as it’s more fun to play with others than alone. If you teach ensembles and rock bands, your students can practice in groups between lessons without having to find rehearsal space, pack gear, and travel. Plus there are thousands of online sessions played every month on the JamKazam service, including open jam sessions set up by our user community, and students can hop into these sessions, create their own improptu sessions, etc. It's a vibrant and welcoming community of fellow musicians.
One of the great things about this program is that it's extremely easy to get started, and very flexible to your preferences. To get started the music program director simply enters his or her email address and a password at the top of this page to express an interest in signing up. This is not a commitment, just an expression of interest. Someone from JamKazam will follow up with you to answer all your questions. And then if you decide this is a good fit for your music program, it takes only an hour of your time (or less) to set up the program, and we're happy to help you do it step by step. JamKazam does everything else, so this won't be a drain on your time or energy, and you can stay completely focused on your students and your program. Additionally, this is not an all-or-nothing service. It's very flexible. You can offer this service to your music program's parents and students as a helpful option, and anyone who wants to use it can use it, and no one else needs to use it.
A student's family needs to have either a Windows or Mac computer at home that the student can use, and basic Internet service. Nothing fancy at all. The JamKazam can use the built-in microphone and built-in webcam on these computers to capture audio and video, and the student can plug a pair of headphones or earbuds into the computer to hear the high-quality audio.
For parents and students who want the best possible audio quality, JamKazam offers a truly amazing package deal (below our cost), so that a parent/student may purchase a pro quality audio gear package for just $49.99. With this gear, the student can enjoy studio quality audio that is superior to what a built-in microphone can capture. This package includes an audio interface (a small box that plugs into the computer using a USB cable), a microphone, a mic cable, and a mic stand.
JamKazam provides 1:1 support to both teachers and students to help them get everything set up and working properly, and our staff get into an online session to verify that everything is working great, and to show the student around the key features they can use in online sessions.
JamKazam handles all student billing for lessons, so you and the instructors don't have to worry about this. Parents pay online using a highly secure credit card processing system powered by Stripe, one of the largest and most secure Internet commerce processing platforms in the world.
When a parent/student pays for a lesson, or for a month of lessons, JamKazam immediately distributes 75% (less 3% for Stripe transaction processing fees) of the lesson fees to the lesson instructor. The instructor gives up some income on each lesson, but our service enables instructors to travel less, reach more students, and spend more time teaching (and earning). So instructors actually earn more and win with this program too.
And finally, JamKazam distributes 6.25% of the lesson fees into the music program's booster fund to help your program pay for trips, instrument repairs, or whatever other expenses your program needs to fund. This is processed as a direct deposit, so even this takes no time or effort from you to manage.
If you're ready to sign up your school, or you think this might be good for your school but are not sure yet, scroll back up to the top of this page, and enter your email address and a password. Once you've done this, we'll reach out to you to answer any and all questions you have. If you find you want to move forward, we’ll work with you directly to help you get your school ready to go. We're excited that you are considering this JamKazam service, and we look forward to hearing from you!