I’m considering to start online private teaching for Elektron and eurorack modular basics. Partially because I love teaching (art history/theory) and I love music. Partially to try and gain some autonomy of my working schedule and income. Partially to justify buying gear professionally without VAT. Partially to try and grow as a person into taking my talents serious instead of seeing myself as “just an excited amateur” in most things that I do. And partially just out of genuine curiosity.
Two questions:
Any tips from those who already do this? (If you feel like you’d rather protect your own private lessons practice I would also understand).
More specifically: I only have experience with recording into my phone video app and posting it later. So I need to figure out what I technically need for giving online private lessons. To save myself from a full YouTube wormhole on Vlogging and Podcasting: Does anyone have tips for what I could use as setup? Or good Youtube-resources? I imagine my Laptop webcam for my face when talking, and a second camera top-down for my gear. How do you combine/switch between two cameras, ideally easily and affordable? I don’t think I need professional looking videography, just good resolution enough for educational purposes.
Thanks for your help!
PS I have a three year old MacBook Air (intel I7 16gb) dedicated to music which I hope will be enough. It work for Zoom and Teams, so I hope so.
Added:
I have a Zoom H6 incl the X/Y mic and the other more wide mic, the mesh ball one.
You need people who want to have lessons with you.
After just do it with whatever you have and then you’ll ask questions that are more specific on how to optimise the process or improve the experience for your students.
Ok I am going to put my answer in a different way.
“I want to be an electronic instruments tutor with a focus on elektron machines. To be a tutor I need students.”
Q: Where can I find students?
A: Maybe through elektronauts forum, instagram, YouTube, Twitter.
Q: How can I grab their attention?
A: Well, I need to post on these platforms and share my expertise and give social proof I am actually good at teaching these topics.
Q: How so on platform X?
A: Hmm others have done this so let me check what has worked. On YouTube, for example, good lighting and good audio works, camera doesn’t seem to be a biggy but with time I can improve it. Maybe my phone is enough to start… but defo I need good audio since this is audio focused.
Any way, this is a rabbit hole of first principles thinking and I am sure if you keep going you will have detailed answers that can become your process.
There is this tool I saw that might be useful and it’s called Screenflow. It can mix streams from camera, screen and e…g your laptop camera all in a video - I am considering it for myself (I am building midicircuit.com, although this would be used in more marketing stuff).
I haven’t used it but I am aware of its popularity. I am sure there are other tools around and maybe producthunt.com can help finding other options.
You can also use OBS but it’s a bit more intricate.
This might not be entirely relevant to you but I would take a look at what Curtis Judd does with professional audio recording. He does location corporate/TV gigs and uses that experience to make a bunch of high quality and useful gear review and explanation videos, and also does livestreams taking questions and interviewing guests in the industry. And with the YT platform he’s also able to advertise paid courses which are series of videos teaching the basics and details of how to use various audio equipment, I haven’t needed to use any of these myself but I imagine they’ve been useful for many people.
Aside from the potential business inspiration I would strongly recommend taking a look at some of his videos about video/audio production if you plan on doing lessons professionally, clean highly quality audio with slick production is kind of essential if you want people to really take you seriously IMO, and the video side of things can be important too.
As for a quick summary of the technical side I would suggest that a dedicated mic is essential, ideally something directional that you can use up close to your mouth so it doesn’t pick up too much distracting noise. Might want a boom arm for it so it’s not too in the way of your arms. Make sure you have good mic technique and signal chain settings so the level is consistent and clear. You don’t have to spend a lot, even a typical vocal dynamic mic would probably be just fine though you may want to get something specific to suit your voice.
I’m pretty sure you can use something like OBS to switch between mutiple cameras and scenes. And yeah a good clear top-down view of the gear your showing is a good idea, you’ll probably want to make sure you have plenty of lighting on the area so it’s nice and sharp too, might want to invest in a lightbox or something, not my area of expertise tbh. I think that MacBook will probably be ok though you may have limitations with max resolution/frame rate and smooth frames, not sure.
Great, thanks. I’ve added to my first post now that I do have a Zoom H6 with the Xy mic and the mesh ball mic (a bit more Omni I think that is?), which hopefully I can use whilst trying out the first lessons.
This is the only thing Ive heard of, but forgot the exact name. Will look into this.
In a new Mac OS update, I think they implemented using an iphone as a second webcam, which you could sync to you gear, and have the laptop run to your face, which keeps the lessons humanized.
I’m mostly just wanting to go and try it out, to see it it’s for me, and to see if I can learn teaching music in general (as in: maybe also at some point apply electronic music into my teaching practice in the physical world).
Having a way to quickly just try it out a bit would be paramount to not loose this surge of hubris that I feel now. Something like this new Mac OS setting to just get me going asap would help this a lot. I even already have a phone clamp above my gear for recording videos. Thanks for the info, I’ll look into it.
I think the point is more that you need that market if you wish to sell the services. This is by far the hardest part of selling your time, marketing.
Of course experimenting to see if it’s something you enjoy is important first - this is only useful to you once you’ve decided to go all in.
If people are interested in what you have to teach then the details of how you deliver it are purely administrative - the hard part is differentiating yourself in the market and finding people that want to pay you.
Fiver and similar platforms are used extensively for private lessons and the like - Patreon is a good suggestion too not sure I understand your comment about cactuses. It’s a powerful platform that could host content and incentivise people more effectively to buy your services. Lessons feel like a perfect fit for this and there are a lot of musicians on the platform to tap into for help and expertise. Through Patreon I’ve joined a club that meets once a week to discuss and track aspirations and generally just extend my music network - it’s run by an established electronic musician so feels like a great opportunity, and costs me nothing!
I’m sorry, thanks for clarifying, I thought the response about Patreon was meant as a joke, since I was under the impression Patreon is only for YouTubers. Is it possible to just use Patreon without making YouTube videos?
Regarding fiver: luckily Fiver really doesn’t seem to be a thing here in the Netherlands. Or I might be mistaken.
Patreon has nothing to do with YouTube, in fact YouTube has its own subscription service for fans. Even then, you know most big artists have a presense on youtube right? You don’t have to put a cactus in your shots if you don’t want to, and there’s also a lot of teaching material on the platform - you’d be making a mistake by ignoring it if you think you have to be a hipster to record your art.
You don’t have to be so defensive, I’ve said sorry. I like Youtube to learn from, I use it a lot. I just don’t want to record videos for YouTube, I want to try giving private lessons.
I’m sorry if I offended you, I’ll remove the cacti remarks
Ah it does come across that way, not my intention No offense taken my shots are all cactus free (but only because you can’t see the one on my window sill…)
No offense taken my shots are all cactus free 
(but only because you can’t see the one on my window sill…)