Teaching
How do you run a music lesson online?
Jean-Marc Perc · · Length 0:57
Online music teaching rarely fails on the video connection. It fails because teacher and student are looking at two different things: one explains a position, the other sees a camera image of it. Teacher Mode in SMART FRET starts exactly there – teacher and student work in the same session, and what you show appears instantly on the other side.
Where do your sessions live?
Your name in the upper right takes you to My Sessions – the collection of every session you have built. They can be organised there, in a folder structure you define yourself.
That sounds like admin, but it is the precondition for everything else: teach weekly and after six months you do not have twenty exercises, you have two hundred. Without structure, an exercise you cannot find again is the same as one that does not exist. How to bundle material into snapshots and courses is the previous tutorial.
How do you invite students?
Under Students you manage your students and add new ones by sending an email invite. Once they have joined, they work alongside you in SMART FRET while you teach.
Whether and what students pay depends on the plan – the details are in the FAQ and on the pricing page, and only there, so the two cannot end up saying different things.
What happens between lessons?
This is the genuinely underrated part. Because students have the same access, every lesson can be practised again afterwards – not from memory, but in the same state it was taught in.
That shifts what a lesson is: no longer the only moment the material is available, but the way into a week of working with it. And because the material stays interactive, the obvious next step for a student is not only repetition but experimentation.
How do you start a live lesson?
Live Lesson is built specifically for live teaching. You start it from the same place and invite your students straight into the session.
Once you are in, you share snapshots in real time: whatever you show on your end, they see instantly on theirs.
One student or a whole class
The same setup carries both cases – a single student online or a whole class. For music schools that is the difference between “we offer online lessons too” and a lesson where everyone has the same fretboard in front of them.
Why a shared session beats a shared screen
A shared screen transmits a picture. A shared session transmits a state – and that is a difference in substance, not in technology:
- The student sees the position on their own instrument layout, not as someone else’s fretboard filmed from an unhelpful angle.
- The material stays usable after the lesson instead of being left behind as a recording.
- There is no gap between “I explain” and “I can see what is meant” – both are looking at the same thing.
Which is why Teacher Mode is the module that decides whether online teaching is a fallback or a form in its own right.
In short
- "My Sessions" holds every session you have built, in a folder structure you define yourself.
- Students are invited by email and then work alongside you in SMART FRET during the lesson.
- Whatever was covered in the lesson can be practised again afterwards, on their own.
- In a live lesson you share snapshots in real time – what you show, they see instantly.
- The same setup carries a single student online and a whole class.
More about this module: Built for teaching & schools →
Full transcript of the video
If you click on your name in the upper right corner, you'll see 'My Sessions' — this is the collection of all the sessions you've made. You can organize all your sessions here too, and set up your folder structure however you prefer.
Now, if you click on Students, you can manage your students — and add new ones by sending them an invite over email. Once they've joined, they can use SMART FRET together with you while you're teaching — so every lesson you've had with them can also be practiced on their own in SMART FRET, and they're encouraged to experiment with whatever new concept you just covered.
And then there's Live Lesson — built specifically for live teaching. I can start a live lesson right from here and invite my students directly into the session. Once we're in, I can share snapshots with them in real time, so whatever I'm showing on my end, they see instantly on theirs. This way you can share it with a student online, or even teach a whole class online.