Covid has forced lots of people to work online and there are many industries that have found the benefits, productivity has apparently increased over the last few months but that may be offset by a reduction in innovation and creativity that tend to arise from in person discussions. Travel time is reduced, and one of the things that became obvious early on was that the amount of time spent commuting or travelling from one lesson to another is huge and that time can now be put to good use in other ways. Working hours have also increased although in many … Continue reading What is required for home working?

Well, this week we decided to embark an a new project for us, a virtual rehearsal. Back in April we began Lockdown Brass and started with a couple of live online rehearsals. To be honest they were a bit of a disaster due to the lag on the internet which meant that no-one could hear anyone else accurately. Six months on and after some research we decided to have another go but in a different format.   I had heard that some groups had developed a system which seemed to work. This consisted of distributing the parts by email and … Continue reading So how did the virtual rehearsal go?

One of the most noticeable things since music and the arts have been completely closed down is the way in which online perfomance and video concerts and competitions have sprung up. One of the first things I tried was to see if we could organise an online live rehearsal. That proved to be a particulalry bad idea, the lag on video conferencing sites made playing together an impossibility as the different lag rates worked to make sure that no one could actually work out exactly where everybody else was playing so that didn’t last very long. Looking around the internet … Continue reading Videos and online performance

Ok, I admit it ventilation is something that I obsess about (I am not normally known for obsession incidentally}. Ever since this wretched pandemic started, we were advised to wash hands and keep at least 2 metres away from others but face masks only came later. I must admit i was initially a bit of a sceptic about their effectiveness, after all the virus is small enough to pass through the fabric easily and I always wondered about them. However, when I studied it the issue became less clear cut. There are two types of droplets here, the larger droplets … Continue reading Ventilation, Brass and Covid

Many of us have been teaching effectively online for quite a while and although opinions differ widely on this my own view is that the difference between teaching remotely and face to face is rather small and it seems that … Continue reading Theory online?