TEACHING MUSIC ONLINE
FarPlay is great for teaching music online!
All subscription plans let you create a Persistent Room (10 if you subscribe to FarPlay For Teachers) so you can email connection information to students ahead of time. Each Persistent Room comes with a Waiting Room, which lets you prevent a student arriving early for the next lesson from interrupting the current one. New in FarPlay 1.3.2, you can create a pinned banner at the top of the chat window for each of your Persistent Rooms — great for sharing links to music pdfs with your students, for example.
Subscribing to FarPlay For Teachers lets your students make recordings when they join sessions you create, even if they aren’t subscribers. Learn more about our subscription plans.Do students need to subscribe? (No).
Students don’t need to create an account to connect with teachers on FarPlay. When a teacher with a subscription creates a session, the session has no time limit and allows more than two people to join—even if the teacher is the only participant with a subscription. Visit our pricing page to learn about subscriptions.Do students need Ethernet?
If you’re just taking turns playing, rather than playing together, neither end needs to use Ethernet. Wi-Fi is good enough for substantially better audio quality and latency than with Zoom, Teams, etc. And FarPlay’s full-duplex (simultaneous two-way) audio lets you talk over each other naturally, a relief compared to the game of “No, no, you go ahead” you might have played in regular video conferences.
However, even when Ethernet isn’t required, it’s still preferred. Compared with Wi-Fi, Ethernet gives you fewer dropouts and less distortion.
Want to make music together in rhythmic sync? We strongly recommend that each participant (student and teacher) use an Ethernet cable to connect their computer to the router that receives the fiber or cable internet signal where that signal first enters the home. For details on Ethernet and Wi-Fi see our blog post on the topic.
Share instructions with students
Please feel free to customize the message template below when introducing students to FarPlay.You’ll need three items:
- To use FarPlay, you’ll need a laptop or desktop computer — be it Mac, Windows, or Linux. FarPlay isn’t yet available on mobile devices like iPads or smartphones.
- Connect your computer directly to your router with an Ethernet cable (https://a.co/d/cSdGxZ4). If your computer doesn’t have an Ethernet port, use an Ethernet adapter (USB-C Ethernet adapter https://a.co/d/aNwCvZX or USB-A Ethernet adapter https://a.co/d/en1Fzpl). It’s totally fine to use a long Ethernet cable (Ethernet cables are designed to be 300 feet in length without signal degradation). Turn off Wi-Fi on your computer.
- Make sure you use wired headphones, preferably with an external mic. If you have the Apple EarPods (https://a.co/d/6Aiemyk) that used to come with iPhones, those are great and include an external mic!
Click to go to my Persistent Room. There’s a waiting room, so feel free to click the link a few minutes ahead if you like!
[Teacher]
Share your screen with your students
FarPlay comes with screensharing built in. This is great for guiding your students to use FarPlay and for showing your students sheet music.- To share your screen, click the Camera icon
in the video window and choose Share desktop screen.
in the video window and choose Share desktop screen.
Optimize FarPlay for connecting with students on university and college campuses
We recommend that teachers planning to connect with students on university and college campuses follow our steps for setting up port forwarding.May I use your logo? (Yes).
Please feel free to use our logo to advertise that you offer lessons on FarPlay!