For a musician there’s never a day-off. None of them were brought to us with the quarantine so far. My teacher always used to tell me that there are 24 hours in a day: 8 hours to sleep, 8 hours to practice and 8 hours for everything else. Today he says: 8 hours to sleep, 8 to practice and 8 to practice again.

I must be honest and say that in depths of my mind I expected to have more free time in this situation. University is closed, gigs are cancelled, no rehearsals. But JAM switched to the online (distance) learning and left no chance to get bored at home. And this I find great.

Me and my prof have rearranged the structure of our classes. Instead of 1,5 hour class once a week vis-à-vis we have divided the main subject (guitar in my case) lesson into 2 online lessons twice a week. As a mean of communication we are using ZOOM. It’s pretty good but the sound latency still doesn’t allow to jam or comp each other simultaneously. So now I always have to play a piece alone which forces me to play more accurate tones and rhythms.

My side instrument classes (piano) have also become a little stricter. Nowadays I have to record all the tasks I’m working on and send them as an audio or video file to the teacher. Excuses like “I had no time” or “there were no free rooms to practice” do not sound very realistic for obvious reasons. So it really motivates me to practice.

Concerning the theoretical classes it differs. Of course nothing can substitute the real face-to-face lectures with profs. But on the other hand I have to be more disciplined to find time to cover the theoretical tasks which are being sent to us weekly.

To sum up I’d really say there are a lot of positive effects in the current situation in terms of practicing music. And I’m really looking forward to reap the benefits of such intense time of studying.