Remote learning

Today was my first singing lesson on Skype. My webcam still hasn’t arrived so I could see V but she couldn’t see me. Which is it as it should be. I am older, raddled and given to insincere smiles. V, in contrast, has a powerful message: singing is uplift.

I felt strangely formal, glad I’d doffed my pyjamas and shaved even if I was invisible. Skype forces V to talk more and I realised how much of her tuition is usually non-verbal: a brief noise as I repeat a defect, the piano hammered harder for emphasis, a finger pointing ceilingwards in preparation for a high note, a frown, a smile. In real three-dimensional life silences can be tolerated but not on Skype.

V’s chin appeared to be resting on the bottom edge of my monitor frame. She got up and added another pillow to her stool. Added another. A slight improvement. But why was she constantly looking to her left? Because her Skype-equipped laptop rested on the piano immediately in front and the score had had to be moved.

The lesson was hyper-technical, half an hour devoted to the song’s first four or five notes. I fretted, unable to re-create my own timbre. Demonstrating, V leant forward, forming her lips into a tight circle, then restricting their width with her index fingers; patient as always. I continued to stumble, knowing now how I’d be spending the forthcoming six days in my study.

After more than four years of lessons we’ve become friends, talking briefly about our families and the politics we both hate. For the moment Skype inhibits this. Even so it’s a far greater improvisation than I imagined. And the sound quality is not half bad. Infection is held at bay, progress is tangible.

I sing Schubert's Der Lindenbaum

Here something a little less Serious

And here the Mozart aria I was asked to sing at Lesson No. 1

Finally Lucy's earworm