 Hi guys this is Jason here from Nathaniel. In this lesson we are going to learn how to properly conduct a zoom class or a zoom music class specifically for music as a student or as a teacher if you are a teacher you could watch along but especially for those of you learning music using zoom we've been doing zoom classes since the pandemic and we've seen that the app has improved a lot and grown to serve musicians to do live streaming concerts to handle all sorts of performances of different natures with taking the entire sound system into a audio interface into zoom to the audience so we've used it for streaming concerts and then I figured that why not take some of the same concepts to a normal music class and try to make a music class as good as possible right and I've learned a few things from students as well who've been learning from me a lot of their feedback has helped certainly bring this to life and yeah I hope all these tips and this entire guide will help you to either learn a zoom music class really well and also teach it if you'd like and you'll also get an insight as to how we conduct our music lessons at the music school which is Nathaniel's school of music right so let's get cracking and before we do it'll be great if you can hit that subscribe button and hit the bell icon for regular notifications so what are the goals for this lesson the goal would be to set it up from a teacher's perspective so that the teacher is really comfortable with the class and from a student's perspective so that the student can engage with the teacher can share whatever they want and the teacher can give relevant feedback also with a zoom music class remember the class is not just the class right there are things you may want to give your teacher before the class like an assignment or there are a lot of things the teacher would want to give the student after the class or vice versa for example something as simple as the recording of the class in a timely manner to be able to send that recording to your student or your batch and so on right so for assignments for homework and all of that we need to figure out the entire ecosystem not just how to do the class and also we would want a system which is rather scalable by scalable I mean online music lessons doesn't have to happen only in your house it can happen anywhere it could happen in a hotel room it could happen in well wherever right wherever you you can attend the lesson so scalability also in terms of a class which you really like and you wanted to stream it to your friends you wanted to send it to YouTube you know so things like that will add to the scalability and also I like this setup which I've kind of evolved to because it you can add many devices to this setup you don't have to rely on one gadget or one application to get you running if one fails you always have a setup so as a gigging musician for years using midi using midi for my gigs as a keyboard player uses a laptop so there are a lot of changeable parts you know you update the computer there could be some problem you could then lose out on a software which won't work for example when 32-bit change to 64-bit very difficult lot of the application stop working so you need a setup which is very scalable which will work for any computer any os wherever you are and so on and so forth so those are the goals for this lesson so here's the setup and tech requirements which you'd need to do an amazing zoom lesson first of all a really good or stable at least stable internet connection right to handle the internet well you have a router but that router is wireless so one of the concerns regarding the router is most of the routers are provided by the broadband company and in all honesty it will be absolutely crappy to say the least so you need to figure out a decent router perhaps upgrade a router to something like a tp link archer or something like that that has worked for us quite often so a router may not be enough right you may not get the relevant speed especially if the router is far away from you so what would help is a simple LAN cable or an ethernet cable or an rj45 cable as they call it this clicks into the router and then depending on how much cable length you need you could get a cable and get an as reliable cable as possible which you can just take with you so even if you're learning in a in any environment all wireless routers have a tap point have an ethernet tap point you just have to plug into that and the speed of the internet is going to be ridiculously faster it's not going to be like 20 faster or it'll be like close to 100 times faster possibly right you'll be able to like upload something like 10 gigs in no time versus you know waiting it out later so use a LAN cable very very important another important thing for a zoom class is to install the latest version of zoom and don't use the web browser while joining your class in other words zoom may take you to a google chrome or a safari or whatever don't go there make sure the lesson or the link is inserted in the zoom app and make sure it's the latest version and i'm going to tell you the settings along the way so owing to a lot of drawbacks of zoom in terms of video clarity in terms of mixing of audio signals you would want a third-party app which is absolutely i would have to say open source even and you don't have to spend anything for it too it's called obs open broadcaster software we will have a link in the description you need to install the latest version of that for your respective os or operating system be it windows mac or whatever if you're like me while learning anything i don't like learning from phones and these tiny devices i want to project it i want to see it on a big screen on a big monitor or at least or even my tv if that's possible i do a lot of my my own learning on a tv so just figure out a way if it's possible for you to project your your zoom machine which could be your ipad your tablet or your desktop laptop to a bigger screen or a tv via maybe wireless projection there are so many ways out there you can get a dongle you can get like a chromecast something like that or you could even you know just use a hdmi cable and connect it to your television directly so consider that that will help you see the teacher you know in all its glory another very obvious thing in a zoom class is keep the environment as quiet as possible these are music lessons so you don't want to distract the teacher or vice versa if you are the teacher so and yes zoom has a lot of noise reduction features in built but what happens with noise reduction is quite obvious right it's also going to treat the piano or the guitar or the drums as noise it's because zooms noise reduction algorithm pretty much works for the human voice so if you're talking great maybe the noise reduction will work but we are talking music here and a music lesson where noise is something we don't want a noise reducer especially to target the human voice we want it we don't want any noise reduction or we want control over that if we are audio engineers ourselves so you need to disable your noise settings in zoom which i'm going to come to and thus you need to keep the environment as quiet as possible in a lot of the music lessons which you might have to encounter especially things like piano and drums you will need multi-angle setups the teacher will want to see your fingers playing the piano and also your face because what is a music lesson if you can't see each other's face right so the face angle could probably be the webcam of the laptop while the keyboard angle or the the keys angle needs to come from somewhere else right you can't expect one camera to do its magic so zoom will not allow that zoom can allow you to toggle cameras but it cannot allow you to combine cameras at least at the time of shooting this so what you want to do is you want to connect another camera and the best of the cameras which i would recommend which comes absolutely free is your own phone so you take your mobile phone whether it's android or apple this has worked with almost all my students from all age groups really young kids 10 year olds to above 60 year olds so no one has had this issue you just need your phone your charging cable you plug in the phone into the computer or the laptop and there you have it it also charges which is a bonus and then you install an app which will allow obs or your computer in general to recognize this particular gadget as a as a device or as a video camera so some gadgets out there could be droid cam which works well for android you could also use obs's own inbuilt virtual camera which is also awesome you could also use something called obs ninja which basically allows you to connect wirelessly from your phone you don't even need a cable you can just log in to the wi-fi or the network or just get a code basically and just bring your video in using obs ninja which is also super cool the one i use is for mac only it's really professional it's called camo okay i've i've used it for about a year now and i just cannot use anything else it is a paid app some of these are paid but it's very very affordable so do consider an app for bringing in that extra device or that extra camera now you may also want an extra camera or an extra device for audio for example laptops especially a lot of the windows laptops which i've taught from their inbuilt webcam will also take in audio and to be honest that audio is absolute nonsense in for most cases apple audio is a little better but an iphone the audio of an iphone is incredible so there are some devices where you want the audio from that a device speaker so the device can send both audio and video via a data cable to the machine be it a laptop or a desktop so do consider the an extra app for an extra device and if you want more devices it's the same procedure so you need a usb slot and you just get like a cable a charging cable or you can go wirelessly or you can just join via a server like an obs ninja now in an ideal world we would want to join a zoom class from one account just stare into the thing have it all integrated but if things fail or if you don't have the relevant resources you could just go old school and just join your music class from two zoom accounts so you could basically say my laptop is where i'm going to see my teacher from or maybe my phone is or ipad is where i'll see the teacher from while the teacher can see me through the next device right so consider joining from two zoom accounts it may be a little bit more technically taxing compared to the all fully integrated setup but that's another way to do it so get these things set up i'm sure you have all this stuff in and around you in your own house you all have a phone you all have a laptop that's why you're watching this video a couple of cables here and there pretty much free softwares right guys so i hope you found the lesson useful in terms of setting up your zoom class either as a student or a teacher let's just recap you need decent internet setup and ethernet cable for yourself you need to see it well as a student so consider projecting things and consider helping your teacher out by sharing different angles of you playing how did i do the multi cam setup thing using obs which is absolutely free and open source so set up everything there you can set up your audio and depending on what device you want to get depending on your budget figure that out however the software as you can see a pretty much free the phone is what you already have you just need a couple of cables and it's a very very inexpensive setup i understand i have taken it to a more geeky level in terms of at least audio which is my field so i have to talk as much as i want to on audio and even video if you observe it was quite functional you just have a camera or a webcam plug it in and do a great job and then there was some zoom settings so do check out this entire series whenever you have any doubt setting up a zoom class i think it holds good at the time of shooting this 2021 it will probably hold good for a good amount of time in the future as well right however if things change if a lot of products get hyped up and upgraded i will be sure to be among the first characters who comes up with an updated lesson right guys hope you found the lesson useful and don't forget to subscribe to our channel if you haven't already hit that bell icon for regular notifications consider supporting us on patreon on patreon for this lesson i would have an entire tech guide a tech pdf guide for you to check out it's waiting for you on patreon check it out if you thought the video was too much of a rant and too long just download the pdf and you should be fine cheers and catch you in the next one