Most of the events for the 2020 Summer School will be delivered using Zoom.
Most participants are likely to have already used it for, but if not you can download it for free from zoom.us .
For some of the events you will just be listening and talking so the default settings will work fine.
For other events, you will be playing an instrument or singing. Whilst its possible to participate with the basic settings, it will be better if you take the following into account as far as you can. Zoom is is designed for ordinary meetings with only speech and where mainly only one person speaks at a time, so isn’t by default optimised for music making. The following only apply if you use a PC or Mac though you will still be able to participate in all the courses if you only have a phone or tablet.
* If you can easily do so, directly connect to your router with a cable instead of wi-fi.
* If you have an external microphone its likely to be much better quality than an internal one.
* Go to settings (accessible from the drop down from the user icon, top right) in the Audio section untick Automatically adjust volume. Then click the Advanced button and tick Show in-meeting option to “Enable Original Sound” from microphone, disable “Suppress Persistent Background Noise” and disable “Suppress Intermittent Background Noise”.
* This video from Sound and Music covers these points in more detail and also some links to other resources.
Finally, its worth thinking ahead about how you organise your space so that there will be light on your face (rather than the back of your head) and (if appropriate) that you can play your instrument comfortably in front of the camera/microphone. Headphones can be useful when you are playing along with others (particularly with a loud instrument) but please avoid microphones on headsets that can easily be knocked while you are playing.