The worldwide jam session

Every week, Kristin Shoemaker boots up her computer and webcam and plugs in her Yamaha keyboard. More than 8,000 miles away in Macha, a tiny, remote village in Southern Zambia, 8-year-old Merel van Stam sits in front of her computer and Yamaha keyboard and waits for her music teacher’s instructions.

Soon, from her home in Lakeville, Minn., Ms. Shoemaker will teach Merel how to play basic piano chords and scales.

“For us to link up our two keyboards – here she is halfway around the world – I can hear her like she’s in my living room,” Shoemaker says in a phone interview.

Thanks to advances in technology, musicians and music educators are finding new ways to collaborate. Teachers are using video services such as YouTube and Ustream to upload daily lessons. Webcams enable students and teachers to see one another face-to-face via Skype, an Internet phone and video service.

They also can play piano together over the Web using special software programs, such as TimeWarp Technologies’s Internet MIDI Software.

“I believe this is going to make it possible to develop musical communities of students and teachers who otherwise would’ve had a hard time ... getting together,” says George Litterst, president of TimeWarp Technologies, in Rehoboth, Mass.

Gay Garard-Brewer never imagined she would continue to teach her piano students after moving from California to Seeley Lake, Mont. But after installing the TimeWarp software and a DSL connection two months ago, she started to teach them over the Internet. Recently, she and Mr. Litterst even played piano with her students and watched from afar during a piano recital in California.

One advantage of teaching remotely, she says, is having greater availability for lesson times, but a disadvantage is not “being able to reach over and take a kid’s hand ... and [move] it to the correct spot.”

Another obstacle when teaching remotely, Shoemaker says, is the occasional loss of video and audio capabilities through Skype due to poor Internet connections.

Virtual lessons may never replace the real thing, says Chad Criswell, a music instructor who has been following technology trends in music education for the Iowa Music Educator’s Association. But, he says, it may set a precedent of what’s to come.

“I don’t think it’s going to replace the flesh-and-blood music teacher needing to be in the room, but I do think it’s going to be something that can supplement and save people money, especially school districts,” Mr. Criswell says. “It’s not being used very widely, but it’s starting to move along in ways that I think in the next 10 to 15 years will be quite commonplace.”

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