Old Technology

I am old technology. 

This is what is happening in my life at the moment:

We know that your pupils were booked in for exams in March that we had to cancel, due to unprecedented circumstances.

It was an unprecedented virus.

It’s simple. 

Just record your pupils pieces, in one take, with no mistakes and then upload them to our portal.

Tick here if you’d like to do that. Jump through a hoop, contact your agent, provide bank account details and three copies of your ID and stand on your head if you’d like your money back.

Normal exams? Who can say. Unprecedented times. 

Pieces must be recorded with piano accompaniment. That’s fine. You can work a camera and play the piano.

Social distancing must be maintained at all times.

Your recording must have no outside sounds. Turn your phone to silent, make sure no birds are singing in the recording to confuse the examiner.

Work in a well ventilated room.

Your login details will be sent....soon....can’t say when there has been unprecedented demand. 

The deadline for uploading the videos was yesterday.

Your login will be sent soon.

The deadline was yesterday.

Don’t worry. You will have 7 unprecedented days to upload it from when you get your login.

You must add scans of your music. Copying of music is theft!

All parts of your pupil’s instrument must be able to be seen by the examiner at all times, swaying flute players notwithstanding.

The music stand must never block the examiner’s view of the pupil.

Take care when positioning the camera, so that light from a window doesn’t shine on the pupil.

There must be no shake on the recording.

Details of the music played must be uploaded in a separate word document.  

Uploading is simple. Just drag and drop from your phone.

Your pupil must sign the release form. Didn’t we tell you that before. Sorry, unprecedented.....actually, why aren’t they uploading their own video?

Don’t worry you have seven days from when we sent the login. 

It was in your spam box for two days? Oh well. You have five days.

Videos can’t exceed 50 megabytes.

You don’t know what a megabyte is. Ha ha. How old are you?

Details of how to compress videos can be found on this YouTube tutorial.

You do speak fluent Cantonese, right?

I am over fifty years old. My laptop is coming up for its tenth birthday. My phone is a version small enough to fit into a pocket. My brain in full of holes. I can’t remember passwords. Hell, my name is a challenge some days. 

When my dad retired from British Telecom in the very early nineties he threw his modern, brick of a mobile phone into the Thames. I’m beginning to see why.