Hey gang,

we've had the fortunate pleasure of Tom Metzger's coaching in person
AND through the internet.

of course a live coaching session is better. I agree and support
everything Rob says below.

For a little perspective. We currently sing in the low/mid 70-s and
are aspiring to qualify at Prelims next Spring. We will be using this
process again, with Tom, to "keep us honest". Some will argue, why not
just send a DVD or post a performance on Youtube. Well... they also
work. what they don't do is give you live feedback that you can apply
right away and it's simply faster.

Once you've found your communication convention (one person talks at a
time, and be aware when to stop when the coach wants to say
something...Tom wrote STOP on his hand....funny...) it is a process
that can benefit a LOT of quartets. A simple cost/benefit breakdown
should convince you if you've paid for a few flights... ;-)

I'm not sure we would do more than one hour at a time, but that it
completely subjective to the qtet's situation. One GREAT benefit is
that we can book the session during our normal quartet night (usually
after the warm up) and then can continue working on things immediately
after. My wife really likes that benefit.. since we're a 2 bbshop
night family. ;-)

You DO need a HIGH Speed internet connection and a Computer that can
handle a Webcam. We didn't even use external speakers... We had Tom on
a Mac Laptop (baritone's of course...) on a table 8' away, and he was
on full screen mode. We were using the audio from the laptop and it
was fine. the connection was made through Skype (free) but there are
others...

Bottom line is.... try it. I personally think it's a GREAT tool
enabling high level coaches to reach many different levels of quartets
in the comfort of their home.

Denis
Common Interest
ONT - 2007 District Champs




Re: [bbshoptech] Virtual coaching? Has anyone tried it?

Posted by: "Rob Sequeira" rob.sequeira@... rsequeira

Thu Nov 20, 2008 2:43 pm (PST)

G'day!

I sing baritone in a relatively new quartet in the San Francisco Bay
Area. We're called Brewhouse <http://www.brewhousequartet.com/> .

We recently did a coaching session with Tom Metzger from OwningTheStage
<http://owningthestage.com/> . We were physically in San Jose,
California and Tom was somewhere in Canada.

This essentially involved two computers (each with a webcam, microphone
and speakers), internet connections (local connections were WiFi, remote
were broadband), a quartet, a coach and 5 open minds. From a software
perspective, both computers were runing Mac OS X and we used Skype for
the audio and video.

We could hear and see Tom very well. The audio and video sync'd up fine
and there were really no issues there. We recorded the session.

From Tom's side, he could hear and see the quartet quite well (the
bandwidth remained high enough for 85% or more of the session). To give
you an idea of how rich the experience was, we talked about a wide
spectrum of elements including message of the song, overtones, voice
matching, posture, breathing, synchronisation, intent and effect of the
song on the audience.

It was relatively easy to setup. We had a "sound/video check" prior to
the session to make sure it was going to work and then we met up later
for the real deal. It was bonza!

All in all, as long as you have relatively good up-to-date computers
with a broadband connection between the two, I think you could get quite
a lot out of these types of sessions.

Cheers,
Rob