A Sea of Music
Written by Anne Vawter
During a work stint in Canada, Elizabeth was introduced to the violin and she took to it. We found a teacher locally while we were there and got her started. Her teacher tried hard to deal with video conferencing and getting paid via internet banking, and scheduling across time zones when we moved on, but in the end, it proved a bit too much for her at the end of her career - understandable. So, Isa basically taught herself with a little musical (but not violin specific) help from me. She would listen to her Suzuki recordings and play her pieces on the boat sailing across the Pacific Ocean, in Anchorages in French Polynesia, in the RV while driving across the US and Canada, or in AirBnB’s in France during a summer in Europe. She was diligent, but she needed an instructor because I didn’t know what an “up bow” was.
In 2019, while doing a house sit in France, I googled again and BOOM, Mary Beth’s website popped up where it hadn’t been before! I emailed her and she got back to me quickly (this was new!). We scheduled an initial lesson through her website where we could enter our timezone and see her availability right there on a calendar in OUR time zone! It was a revelation! Dealing with scheduling from time zone to time zone, especially when ours was changing regularly, had proved complex in the past. We found a time that worked for us and had a wonderful first lesson.
Finding a music teacher who can ZOOM seems pretty normal today, but in 2019 (not that long ago) it was a struggle. We are a traveling family. Unless you count our 43 ft sail boat, we haven’t lived in a consistent location for more than a few months since the end of 2014. Our daughter Elizabeth (Isa) was seven when we moved aboard our sailboat and sailed away from San Francisco down to Mexico.
I googled and googled every iteration of “Violin ZOOM Teacher” that I could think of. Very little came up, and instructors who did were only working with more advanced students, or students who were only temporarily or intermittently using video conferencing to learn. So, Elizabeth kept learning as best she could as we worked and traveled our way around the globe.
I can not believe our luck in finding Mary Beth. We needed a tech savvy teacher who was willing to work with a young student and I’m grateful everyday that Mary Beth was creative and innovative enough to start her virtual studio when she could have been extremely successful going the traditional route.
Before we started, I was a tiny bit skeptical about the quality of the lessons we would be able to have. It seemed it would be a compromise. Would it be as good as being face to face? For us, and now for so many, face to face just wasn’t an option; we needed someone who could follow us along during our journey. Mary Beth has proved musically miraculous to my mind. She catches the nuances of what Elizabeth plays, can tell her fingering by how she sounds or by the fuzzily flicking screen due to our sometimes poor internet reception - I’ve no idea how she does it. She never complains about the connection unless it truly is impeding her ability to give quality instruction, and if that is the case, we sign off and reschedule - no 20 minutes struggles with the internet during a 30 minute lesson!
Since we started with Mary Beth in 2019, Isa has gone from early Suzuki Book 3 to Book 8 and beyond. Isa LOVES to practice and with our life on the boat, there are few distractions. She will play for hours most days. I definitely have a daughter who is willing, but Mary Beth knew just how to challenge her, and what games to play to keep her creative, thinking, trying new things. Her favorite was “Stump the Teacher.” Isa would learn a new song each week and play it to Mary Beth. If Mary Beth didn’t know the name of the song, Isa could ask her to play any song in the Suzuki books. It was great fun for Isa. She was finding fiddle tunes and lifting music she heard in old movies to stump her with.
Isa recently turned 13 and she is preparing for her Level 8 RCM exam with diligence. The music is just hard enough to keep her motivated, without feeling overwhelmed. Mary Beth’s style of teaching has evolved with Isa’s age and maturity and she is open, approachable and always seem to read well if Isa needs a push, or to leave it for another day. We’ve had lessons while doing house sits, while we’ve been actually underway on board our boat, in remote anchorages with juuuust enough cell connection, and from practice rooms in music centers we’ve found along the way.
With my other daughter playing piano (yes, we have a 61 key keyboard on board), we’ve taken video conferencing music lessons from about 4 different music teachers. It’s clear to me that when a teacher puts in the time to learn what is important about the technology, and the small things they can do to make the experience smooth, it makes an enormous amount of difference. We are so thankful to those teachers who struggled through and stretched themselves to accommodate our crazy need for video conference lessons - for traditional teachers with no desire to video conference it can seem unsurmountable.
In the last year we’ve been circumnavigating New Zealand. Because of the Pandemic we’ve not been able to move from country to country, so a thorough going-over of the one we are in was in order. As we sailed around NZ, Isa was able to join several Suzuki workshops, meeting other kids who play and joining in orchestral groups. Since August we’ve actually been in one place and Isa was able to join the local orchestra. The chance to play with other musicians should never be passed up, and opportunities to learn face to face are wonderful, but we will keep working with Mary Beth because the quality of the instruction is so high and something that would be impossible to duplicate in the rural town we plan to settle in.
