Image by John Sieger
With Gov. Tony Evers’ announcement that Wisconsin’s "Safer at Home" order will be extended until May 26, we are still making lemonade from lemons. While we cannot venture out to see live performances, musicians are streaming concerts from home and uploading videos to keep music fans entertained.
A handful of local music teachers and engineers took the time to talk about how they are dealing with these strange times.
Julie Brandenburg
Julie Brandenburg
“I was surprised at how well the lessons work,” says Julie Brandenburg of Be Sound Music Studio on Milwaukee’s East Side. “There were a few people, especially adults who have a lot on their plates right now, who had to suspend lessons for now. But most of the families I work with wanted their kids to continue. Besides helping them to keep up on what they have learned, it gives structure to their week at a time when there is little to be had.
“We adapted very quickly, we were able to keep the same rapport going and since kids don’t have as much to do, they have been practicing a lot! It’s a lot more work for both parties, parents are willing to be camera crew so I can see their child and also the keyboard when necessary,” says the veteran of bands True Heart Susie and Liquid Pink.
“My older voice students needed me to record accompaniments since syncing doesn’t work well enough for me to accompany them live. But it is great to get dressed up and go to the studio, it is very rewarding. It is safe and legal, the latter because I am delivering education, safe because I am alone in my own studio, the other teachers who have opted to come in also have their own private rooms. One unexpected happy side effect of doing lessons online is I get to see people's dogs, cats, and even a bearded lizard! That’s pretty neat!”
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Peter Roller
The sound issues with Skype lessons was a surprising factor. You can’t easily talk or play at once or in quick exchanges—things must move slower which is good training for sustained listening before giving feedback, says author/retired college professor/multi-genre guitarist Peter Roller.
“With the kinds of guitar I play and teach, like bottleneck or lap slide/Dobro and fingerpicking, there are quite physical, hands-on aspects with the slide, etc. that are aided by close observation and interaction. I’ve been able to adapt these things to online teaching, but communication is not as direct or fast. All in all, I’ve been happy with the Skype lessons I’ve done but also look forward to when I can return to in-person lessons as well.”
John Sieger
Best known playing with Semi-Twang and R & B Cadets, John Sieger has been doing guitar lessons and hosting song clinics online, including his first international lesson with an American working in Delft, Netherlands.
“One of my Milwaukee songwriting students has written a really fun COVID tune, ‘All The Dogs Are Happy In The Neighborhood,’ about the virus being a great thing for our canine friends,” Sieger says.
“Zoom takes some getting used to —it’s really important to adjust your audio settings for music and not speech. It's intended for meetings and has noise reduction that absolutely destroys guitars. There are videos available that show the three simple changes you need to make. Also, there's a built in delay as the signal is sent to a server somewhere (Timbuktu?), then up to a satellite, down to another server (I wanna say Borneo) and then to the person you are Zooming with. That means playing together is out of the question. Other than that, I’ve found Zoom to be a great tool—it really eases the isolation you feel in quarantine.”
Sieger admits, “I do wind up chatting a little more than I usually do at lessons. The other drawback is getting charts to my guitar students. I usually chart a song or two in real time, but now I check in before and create chart/drawing out on my iPad. The results are hilarious, but they work!
“This is a strange time and music helps a lot, I’ve been doing some long distance recording with my friend Phil Lee, The Mighty King Of Love and singing harmony with my wife for the first time ever at our Zoom singalong. Anything you can do to stay safe and sane is good—truth be told, the online lessons help me as much as the students.”
Jeff Stehr
Tritonics front man Jeff Stehr has been transitioning from in-home, in-person private piano, guitar and ukulele lessons to remote lessons delivered via Facetime, Skype and Zoom. He began transitioning from in home lessons to remote lessons the week of March 9. One week later, on March 16, lessons went remote.
“I have 29 families on my client list and 21 of them have made the transition from in person lessons to virtual. FaceTime is used by about 85% of those families and Skype Business and Zoom is used by the remainder,” he says.
He adds that families who have decided to forgo lessons during the coronavirus outbreak fall into two main categories: Families experiencing reduced expendable income due to reduced hours at work, furloughs, layoffs or full termination and those with no interest or lack of desire to rely on technology for lessons.
“Remote lessons are like looking at a painting instead of the real world,” he said. “You can still get some enjoyment out of it, but it pales in comparison to the 3D world we live in.
“Personally, I share this view in category two, but I do the lessons online anyway because for now at least, it is the only way to continue to help my students progress and, like everybody else, I have bills to pay. I will leap back into real world, in-person lessons with great relief as soon as social distancing restrictions permit.”
Stehr says he feels like he is passing along knowledge, but misses the passion, uninhibited interactivity and spontaneity of in person lessons.
“For young kids especially, it is very challenging to overcome student uncooperativeness when connected via a screen. My physical presence in lesson inhibits student misbehavior and improves student focus. This is not an issue with students 15 years of age or older, but that is only 30% of my students.”
According to Stehr, the upsides of this new, technology and device-dependent way of teaching include huge savings on fuel costs. He said he is currently earning about 70% of his usual income by doing online lessons.
He echoes Sieger, agreeing this new, technology and device-dependent way of teaching increase pre and post lesson work time (writing notes on pieces of music cannot be done in real time as it is when he is sitting right across from or next to his students), unreliable and or inconsistent connectivity and diminished communication quality.
Eric Ambel
Mixing and Mastering: Eric Ambel
“Well, I'm locked out of Cowboy Technical Services (his Brooklyn recording studio) by the State of New York,” says Eric Ambel, the musician/producer who spent Summers in Fontana, Wisconsin before making his name playing with the likes of Joan Jett and Steve Earle.
“I am lucky that just before the new year I did some major upgrades on my home recording setup. Like most of my friends, my calendar—be it playing live or working in the studio—has been wiped completely clean for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, I played one streaming gig for the Americana Highways website where I performed songs by bands that I have produced.,” he says.
He has been working on recording and mixing songs with Andrew Grimm (June Star) from Baltimore, collaborating on songwriting with Sarah Borges, doing demos for Mary Lee Kortes and doing some overdubs for Jimbo Mathus down in Taylor, MS.
“I’m lucky the people in my town, faced with this tragedy, are taking the virus seriously,” he said. “As of today, I've lost four friends from it and three of those fall into the ‘un-diagnosed’ category. I work on the music to get away from the news. I've also been releasing some tracks I had collected on Bandcamp as part of what I’m calling The Shut In Singles Series. I try to stay busy.”
Shane Hochstetler
“It’s definitely been an odd couple months to say the least. I was on a four-and-a-half week tour with Child Bite at the beginning of March and we had to cut it all short just after a week out. Drove home from Austin, Texas and I just went right back to work mixing because I could do it alone,” says drummer/engineer Shane Hochstetler.
“I have a fair number of projects that just had mixing left so I was able to hop on them right away. It’s definitely been odd being in the studio (Howl Street Recordings) every day alone. There’ll be times where I’m just mixing alone—but not for two months straight.”
Hochstetler says he has bands booked solid into August but for obvious reasons had to reschedule all the tracking sessions for April and May.
“Who knows what will be rescheduled for June? I’m just taking it all day by day. What’s been the biggest surprise? Hmmm...I guess how weird it is to get used to living life in a locked down situation. I mean, I don’t do anything but work and go home and do a few tours a year but it’s nice to know I at least have the option to have a social life—so that’s been weird,” he laughs.
He says his mixing workload has been heavy but the longer out tracking sessions get pushed the less mixing there’ll be. “At a certain point there won’t be anything left to mix but I’m guessing if we hit that mark, we as a planet will have bigger fish to fry so…”
Hochstetler saus his plan is just trying to stay positive and informed but also not go crazy chewing on news every minute of the day. “I definitely have this like, immense weight of sadness with all that’s going on. I’m beyond lucky to have good health, knock on wood, and my friends and family have been getting through this safely. I feel absolutely horrible for all who have lost loved ones to this mess. t’s no doubt going to leave a massive scar on us all forever. But yeah, we gotta try our best to keep positive and help each other through this.”
Justin Perkins
“So far, my workload hasn’t slowed down a bit,” says Justin Perkins of his Wauwatosa-based Mystery Room Mastering. “It may have even increased slightly as people now have time to finish up lingering projects, dig up old stuff to remaster.” He said there has been a surge of singles, even some songs inspired by COVID-19 and the lockdown.
After you take lessons and record your music, mastering is usually the final step before a project gets released to the public. Perkins’ gold-standard reputation finds him working on projects from local musicians to The Replacements and En Vogue.
“Fortunately for me, mastering is a self-isolating practice even in normal times. I do feel for the recording studios that require group gatherings to get things done but as of now, my workload is basically the same as it ever was,” Perkins says.
