The world needs a different approach to music lessons. Just like with most of the professions today, music education has now become available through online platforms, basically without any need to actually go anywhere far from your bedroom. Sure, brick and mortar schools are still there; but with our modern-day lives, it often gets much more practical to have music lessons through online platforms.
And the best rising platform for this purpose, Rock Out Loud Live, is getting improved as we speak. After a noticeable rise in popularity, the service now has a new addition that will make the lives of both students and teachers much easier – the new annotation tool.
The Annotation Tool Features
So what’s the whole fuss about? Well, first off, the whole thing is available using the Google Chrome browser. Just access the whiteboard through the left-side ribbon by selecting the WB icon and then select the “application window” option in the dialog box that opens up. This way, a student will be able to see the whiteboard as you’re working on it. Note that the whiteboard feature is only available to paid subscribers.
The whiteboard features a whole set of tools for you to write standard musical notation with ease. Aside from the standard “pencil” tool, music notes, treble clef, bass clef, and others, you’ll also get an option to create tablatures for guitar, bass, and ukulele. What’s more, the additional tools also include a blank piano, as well as chord diagram tools for guitars and ukuleles. Of course, this is all accompanied by other tools like the eraser, text comments, undo, redo, and even file sharing. But one of the most important features is the option to save your progress on the whiteboard. The file is saved as a regular PDF and you can download it and even upload it at any time.
Furthermore…
Adding the standard notation is pretty easy and you can even position and arrange everything the way you want to. You can have your standard notation example; then add some text to explain it below, and then even add chord diagrams and tabs in there. Of course, this is just one idea, but the options with such a tool are endless. In fact, you have everything that you need to create an entire collection of lessons or books for your students, all while using the Annotation Tool in Rock Out Loud Live. At the end, when you’re done with your work, saving the PDF file of your lessons also makes it much easier for sharing and saving one student’s progress.
Positioning things the way you want to is also available with every single individual notation element. Whether it’s a note, a sharp symbol, or a flat symbol. For this, you’ll need to select the note tool in the header; then right-click on the surface where you want to add it; then select which note or a symbol that you want to use. For every new element, you’ll need to right-click again and then add everything one by one. What’s also really useful is that you can add a blank keyboard and then use different colored marks to the individual keys. This can either be a scale, a chord, or an interval.
Combining this new Annotation Tool with the Rock Out Loud Live platform allows for many different approaches to online music lessons. The interactive PDF editor, specially designed for music notation, allows you to work with students as if you were writing notation and notes in front of them. When the lesson is over, just save it all and send it via the PDF file-share button.
What Is Rock Out Loud Live
The Rock Out Loud Live platform was designed to bring the most practical and effective solution to all of the present-day challenges in music education. It’s accessible through a simple browser; a teacher can create an individual lesson room with video and audio chat, all through a very safe peer-to-peer connection.
The creation of these chat rooms is fairly simple and its overall practicality is why many musicians love it. To put it simply, it helps both students and teachers bring the best out of their talents while doing online lessons.
What Makes It a Viable Solution to Zoom and Other Video Chatting Platforms?
But one might ask themselves, “Why would I use this new random thing when I already have Zoom, Skype, FaceTime, or any other chatting platform?” Well, the answer is pretty simple; Rock Out Loud Live is specialized for individual music lessons with its great features. You’ll not only have a vast collection of chord diagrams for guitar, bass, piano, drums, and ukulele. There’s also an abundance of songs available as sheet music and tablature files. You can call up both the chord diagrams and sheet music at any time during an individual session.
What’s more, Rock Out Loud Live features a “Share PDF File” button. It comes in handy if you want to send a simple file or an entire book to your student. So there’s no need to use emails and spend more time and energy on other distractions during one session.
But one of the most important things is the focus on sound quality. Sure, not that long ago, Zoom introduced a special mode for musicians and music teachers, focusing on the audio quality at the expense of video quality. However, this feature takes some effort to activate through Zoom’s somewhat complicated settings; these can pose quite a challenge if you’re working with younger students.
As we already said, Rock Out Loud Live is here to bring the best of both parties in music education. In modern times, when challenges of modern-day lives can impact anyone’s education, Rock Out Loud Live swoops in to save the day with its very useful features.
