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To take Skype lessons with me, the pre-requisites are:
• You must have high speed internet (DSL, cable modem, etc.). For high quality video, download and upload speeds must be at least 380KB/second, per Skype’s specs. Dial-up will not work.
You can check the speed of your internet connection by going to http://speedtest.net/. That website indicates your local access point/city with a spinning gold star. Click the star and the site conducts testing, finally displaying your upload and download speeds in kilobytes (KB) per second.
• You must be tech savvy enough to:
– Download and print out lesson material PDF’s I email to you a day or two before each lesson
– Test your home setup, and work out any audio and video problems before our first Skype lesson. I recommend you do testing with a friend or relative who also has Skype and a webcam, so we don’t spend valuable lesson time sorting out tech issues instead.
– Regularly check your email, my normal channel of communication is email first, cell phone second.
• You must have a PayPal account to pay for your lessons in advance. If that doesn’t work for you, then a check or money order must reach me and clear my bank before lessons begin.
NOTE: all lesson audio and printed materials are Copyright © John McClung, and provided for your personal use only. They are not to be given, loaned, or sold to anyone else, and may not be posted to YouTube or any other website. You are required to sign an agreement to that effect before we begin lessons.
How to set up your steel and computer
Your steel guitar and computer must be right next to each other so you can hear and see me, and vice versa. The ideal setup is using a laptop, which you can easily move adjacent to your steel for a Skype lesson. In my home setup, I have a desktop Macintosh in my office, and use my MacBook laptop in my music studio for teaching purposes.
• Audio details: it’s best to plug headphones into your computer to hear my voice and steel. This eliminates the possible feedback we might get if you just listened to incoming sound through your computer’s built-in speakers, which, especially on laptops, are usually very close to the built-in microphone.
In order to hear my audio in your earphones, plus the sound of your own amp, earbuds or open-ear headphones work best.
• You need a webcam, and the better its audio and visual quality, the better I can monitor how you’re doing.
Your webcam can be built into your computer (iMac, many laptops). But I find it better to use an external webcam, and attach it to a microphone stand with boom or gooseneck, allowing you to move the camera around and show me close-ups of your right hand, left hand and other useful views.
Even if you use a laptop or computer with a built-in webcam, you can still plug in an external Webcam, and switch between the two USB devices in Skype’s preferences, if you like.
If you elect to use an external webcam, get a good one. Gear is always changing and improving, but as of this writing (September 2010), I’ve personally tested and highly recommend these two models:
For PC: Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 — it has a Carl Zeiss 2 megapixel glass lens, great autofocus, great imaging in very low light, great audio through its built-in mic. Shoots video and stills. Many more features. USB 2.0 device. List price is $99.99. Currently on sale at many web retailers for $69.99.
For Mac: Logitech QuickCam Vision Pro — essentially the same camera and specs as the QuickCam Pro 9000, but more features available in its hardware rather than software. USB 2.0 device. Note, it doesn’t have quite the feature set of the PC webcam. But for remote learning, it’s still top notch. List price is $129.99 (higher due to the features in hardware complexity), but currently (June 2010) on sale as low as $95. Amazon.com is usually a reliable low-cost source.
Go here for a hands-on video demo and review:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRMDk5X2iCQ&feature=channel
And here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRxBKw9cITs&feature=related
If you do use an external camera/mic, remember to go into your audio and video prefs (Mac) or audio and video control panels (PC) and select your external webcam as the video input, and the webcam mic as your audio input.
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