Virtual Reality at Parker: COVID Delays Don’t Stop Musical Progress

The global effects of COVID-19 have delayed supply-chain and musical instrument deliveries; unfettered, Parker music students and teachers have turned to virtual reality to continue music-learning—using VR rhythmic software to help hone musicians’ internal beat, rhythm-reading and practicing skills.

The Music Department joined the Integrated Learning and Information Sciences Department (ILIS) to challenge and grow music students in an adrenaline-pumping virtual reality rhythm world.

In VR software, students move arms and bodies to drum rhythms and tempi (some even approaching a “presto” 170 beats per minute!). Simultaneously, students must “read ahead” to ensure their hands and bodies are in position to play the musical notes to come.

For music-learning, the software is most valuable in its “practice” mode; it guides students to isolate, slow down and repeat their most troublesome sections.

Inevitably, students discover their musical “limits” (the fastest speed-challenging passages can be played). After practicing slowly and accurately, they’re then primed to return to full performance tempo and accomplish their goals—the exact same process used in real-life music creation.

VR music class was a new, unique classroom environment. Even while engrossed in their respective virtual worlds, students talked out loud together, with comments like, “I didn’t think we’d be doing [anything like] this in music!”

Parker’s musical instruments will arrive later this week, and Parker’s music students are now excited, primed and ready to apply their VR “practice modes” to actual-reality music-making.