As more and more New Yorkers are getting Covid-19 vaccines and the general cases are beginning to decline again, the city is beginning to finally wake up from its year-long, pandemic induced slumber. Many businesses, industries, and education centers are looking to return in non-virtual capacities, and The New York City Guitar School is among them. But as the New York City Guitar School is preparing our soft re-opening of in-person, many of our teachers, staff, and especially students, are considering whether returning to in-person lessons is right for them, or if maybe they should just keep sticking to virtual lessons for at least the next little while. 

It’s a real question facing our community right now, so I wrote this piece analyzing some of the factors to consider. If you yourself are a student unsure of whether or not you think returning to in-person is right for you, then I hope that the following discussion helps you reach a decision! 

Covid Safety

As we approach re-opening, Covid safety is at the forefront of our mind’s at NYCGS, and it should be at the forefront of your mind as well. If you’ve been vaccinated, have antibodies, or are otherwise at low risk of contracting and/or spreading coronavirus, then coming in to have your lesson in person may very well be worth it for you. However, if none of those things describe you, then maybe sticking to virtual lessons for the time being is the way to go. There is something magical about a good in-person guitar lesson that’s sometimes hard to get over Zoom, but if you’re high-risk and/or still unvaccinated, it may not be worth contracting a potentially deadly virus while sticking it out on Zoom just a little bit longer is still a totally viable option. 

Location

This one may seem obvious, but it’s worth still addressing. A thing that’s amazing about virtual lessons is that it allows us to teach students all over the world, something which NYCGS previously didn’t do. While if you live in another state or country it may be pretty clear that in-person lessons with NYCGS simply aren’t an option for you, there are other students we’ve acquired since the beginning of the pandemic who are commuting distance away from some of our locations. If this describes you, then it really may be a toss-up whether or not it’s worth it to start coming into one of our studios for in-person lessons.

If you live far enough away that even our nearest location is still a trek for you, then traveling back and forth can be a big time commitment each week. It’s possible that if you account for both trips, you could even spend more time in a car or train than you’d be spending in your lesson. Yet even with all of that, it might still be worth the time spent in transit.

There are things about in-person lessons that are essentially lost over Zoom. The biggest of these is the ability to play together smoothly; the app’s common lagging and tendency to remove competing noises from the mix makes live jamming tricky at best and sometimes just about impossible. If you’ve started taking lessons after the start pandemic and haven’t yet gotten to experience playing live along with another musician, then the experience of commuting for in-person lessons with your teacher could be totally worth it, even if it seems like it wouldn’t be time-wise. 

However, if you have already gotten a chance to experience all of that before the pandemic or if you have musician friends or family members that you like to play music with, then it might be logical not to spend over an hour each week sitting on a subway in order to attend a forty-five minute lesson when you could just do the lesson from home with Zoom. On the other hand, if you live near enough to one of our locations that the trip is quick and relatively painless (are any New York City commutes entirely painless?) and you’ve got your shots or antibodies, then you might as well come in in-person. 

Experience Level

As more and more New Yorkers are getting Covid-19 vaccines and the general cases are beginning to decline again, the city is beginning to finally wake up from its year-long, pandemic induced slumber. Many businesses, industries, and education centers are looking to return in non-virtual capacities, and The New York City Guitar School is among them. But as the New York City Guitar School is preparing our soft re-opening of in-person, many of our teachers, staff, and especially students, are considering whether returning to in-person lessons is right for them, or if maybe they should just keep sticking to virtual lessons for at least the next little while. 

It’s a real question facing our community right now, so I wrote this piece analyzing some of the factors to consider. If you yourself are a student unsure of whether or not you think returning to in-person is right for you, then I hope that the following discussion helps you reach a decision! 

Many have noted the difficulty of having a first ever guitar lesson over Zoom. It can be hard to get yourself in tune before knowing how, it can be hard for your teachers to notice errors in things like posture and grip, and a laggy Zoom session can make mimicking rhythms and strumming patterns a real challenge. While that very first guitar lesson can be the biggest hurdle to overcome on Zoom, the fact remains that the earlier stages of learning an instrument don’t lend themselves all that smoothly to virtual lessons. 

When you just start learning something, you by definition don’t know very much about it yet. It’s totally normal, and we’ve all been there with a variety of things. This results in the early stages of music instruction largely focusing on establishing a tangible foundation for you to build on top of. This foundation typically includes things like developing solid timing, holding the instrument correctly, reading music off the page (even if it’s just chord charts and tablature), staying in tune, and other things that are unfortunately still quite hindered by the current state of video conferencing technology. 

On the other hand, more advanced players are often less inhibited by the limitations of virtual learning. At this point, you already know how to tune your instrument, count rhythms, and read some form of written music. You’re past the basics and are now able to do a fair amount on your own. The need to have the teacher physically in the room with you isn’t as great as it was when you started, and you may have even discovered some unexpected advantages to virtual learning. Since the pandemic began, many teachers have begun leaning into what technology has to offer their lessons, and many students on the advanced end of things have found it easy to excel under those conditions. If this describes you, then there’s a chance that it may be worth it to just stick with at home lessons.

To synthesize what I’m aware was a somewhat lengthy discussion of the topic, I made the below chart to highlight some of the reasons for both coming in person for lessons, and for staying virtual.