Skype Lessons [Doug Elliot]

[PaulT]

I am thinking about trying to get some lessons from Doug Elliot (please feel free to contribute, Doug ).

Are the lessons via Skype?

Are my laptop's (relatively recent model) video and mic sufficient or is setting up a camera and separate mic 1) necessary 2) preferable? I have a "newish" camcorder and a USB mic somewhere.

How do I set up the lesson "room" on my end (position the computer, position myself relative to the computer( or separate camera) for the trombone playing part of the lesson.

Should I order a clear mouthpiece? If so, what kind? (a Back 6.5 AL type is close enough to what I typically use)

What, in addition to anything covered above, should I have lined up/ready/at hand for a successful Skype lesson?

Thanks,
Paul

[Doug Elliott]

Here are some answers:

Most of my time is pretty available. Let me know when is convenient for you. Skype and Zoom are fine.

It's best to get right on playing correctly so you don't waste time playing wrong. You can progress really fast when you're doing things right. Do not be embarrassed... You don't go to a doctor when you're feeling great, right? I'm only interested in helping you get better from where you are now.

I can take credit cards or PayPal. I can also do fractions of an hour, sometimes an hour is actually more than necessary.

You don't need to.prepare anything. I usually see what I need to see very quickly because I know what I'm looking for.

I need to see your face clearly, from face level, so arrange yourself and the camera in a good spot level with your face. I don't want to be looking up at the ceiling from below you, or down from above. Other than that you don't need any special equipment. I use a notebook computer with nothing special, and it's fine. Tablets or phones are fine too.

[PaulT]

Thanks, Doug

I have some ducks to line up, but this is something I really want to do. I will PM in early March.

Paul

[timothy42b]

I have had several skype lessons with Doug and they were very useful.

I just used my regular Win10 laptop with built in mike and speakers, nothing fancy; that was adequate.

I sat sideways to the laptop, which is on a table. I put a stand in front of me and a lamp behind me. The problem with a laptop on a table is you can't face it without banging your slide. I think using a tablet on a stand in front of you would be a much better solution and I intend to try that.

[Elow]

You can download apps that use your phones as a webcam instead of using your laptops camera. Would be easy to just put phone on stand and laptop on a desk somewhere

[PaulT]

Thanks for the tips.

Once I get my music room back, I will dig into the logistics. Using the music stand as a camera holder sounds like a good place to start. I suppose I should prolly consider trimming my moustache back, as well.

[Rrova]

When we had a lesson with Doug for my trumpet-playing son, we just used my iPhone. My son would be playing while I was holding my phone, walking around until we found the perfect angle. So having a partner help you out might be something to consider. But I imagine the vast majority don’t do that.

In 30 minutes Doug had my son doing things I thought he would never be able to do! I will be doing a lesson for my own playing soon!

[RScott]

Hello Doug Elliot. Interested in Skype Lesson. Please forward contact info. THX.

Scott Brannen
505.360.1166

[art]

I am also interested in a lesson. I sent Doug an email to his AOL address a couple weeks ago asking about a small shank mouthpiece to compliment my large one about two weeks ago. Still have not heard back from him.

[Bach5G]

He’s a busy guy.

[Doug Elliott]

I see your email now. I'll get back to you this evening

[art]

He’s a busy guy.

He was already busy back in the 2010's. I cann only imagine how much more busy he is now. I wasn't trying to be rude, sorry if I came off that way

[MahlerEnthusiast]

I see your email now. I'll get back to you this evening

Hi Doug, I am also interested in a lesson. Where can I contact you ?

Cheers,
D

[FranzS]

I see your email now. I'll get back to you this evening

Hello, I’m new here and don’t know how to contact you. I‘de like to et an online lesson from you to if this is possible.

[Doug Elliott]

Welcome Franz, I am replying to your email now.
And for anybody else, I'm relatively open in the next couple of weeks.

[Wilco]

Hi Doug, I sent you a dm.

[Wilco]

Not really necessary but…. Ringing endorsement!!

[Zane7734]

Hey Doug I’d love to get the chance to have an online lesson with you but I’m not sure how to get in direct contact. My email is [email protected] if I’m able to start conversation from here to get in contact. Thanks.

[JMM112003]

I am also one of the various musicians that would love to the chance to have a lesson with Mr. Elliot. I am in need of some sort of light in the very dark tunnel called “embouchure” haha.

All jokes aside, I have already emailed him, now I just gotta play the waiting game! Hopefully I used to right email, only one I could find was in the Mouthpiece website.

(My email is [email protected])

[Myoung18]

I know this is an older thread but wanted to comment. I had my first lesson with Doug last week despite his heavy travel and performance schedule. He was very accommodating and approachable. He helped me better understand my embouchure type and offered straight forward exercises that are already paying dividends. Furthermore, he provided excellent guidance on the appropriate size mouthpiece without any self promotion. Needless to say, I did buy a setup from him and am enjoying playing on his mouthpieces. He is a consumate professional and any lesson with him is well worth it. Thanks Doug, I really appreciate your help.

[timothy42b]

Skype will be discontinued in May of this year (2025). I think Doug does Zoom too so we're probably okay.

Microsoft wants to emphasize Teams instead. I used that at work before retiring; it is very powerful but I found it not intuitive at all.

[NotSkilledHere]

I use teams at work, well the whole Microsoft suite at that, and Teams is definitely one of those cases of designed by engineers and coders, obviously with the earmark of including everything, but not designed with the relatively unknowledgeable end user touching the interface. Everything we need is there, but unless you think like a coder who is writing that program, it's not intuitive at all, and as someone who has written code, it's almost ass backwards. how a coder sees things as intuitive or convenient is not the same way everyone else sees it unfortunately. Someone on their end needs to get a UI and user experience person to look over things and sit them down to realign all the features and where they are placed

[ghmerrill]

Someone on their end needs to get a UI and user experience person to look over things and sit them down to realign all the features and where they are placed

Yeah, but that's like designing and building a better barn door long after the horses have all escaped. And once the code is written (and not particularly well tested), changing that at a later stage is hideously burdensome and expensive -- so, quite simply, they don't.

The correct approach has been known now for decades, well documented beginning at least with the early books by Alan Cooper such as "About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design" and " "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity" -- and similar approaches by others. Everyone knows how to do it right -- upper management just doesn't want to (generally for short-sighted cost management reasons). But anyhow ...

I've used a bunch of apps (going back into the 90s) for online instruction and meeting settings. The very very best has been Webex -- but you have to really pay to play in that league. Otherwise I (and everyone else in my immediate family) have also used Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Zoom, and several others. They're all slightly different fish in the same pond in terms of usability. And our family has shifted from one to another as one or another of our children has changed jobs (IBM, SAS, Truist, Amazon, some start-ups, Discovery Channel, Marsh, ...). We're currently using Google Meet (having switched a couple of years ago from Zoom -- which used to drive me nuts on regular occasions). I expected better. Silly me. Well, it works -- mostly. Except half the time when we're having a family conference call and I bring it up and use my webcam with it, my picture is all goobled (Googled?) up. I finally figured out how to quickly fix it, but it's at least somewhat humorous that Google Meet -- from my point of view and experience -- doesn't function exactly flawlessly on a Chromebook. Still, it's "useable" -- in one weak sense of that word. Take your pick and take your chance.

[Doug Elliott]

I have never had any problems with Messenger. Zoom is OK sometimes. I've used Google Meet a couple of times but not enough to remember how.

I can't imaging why they would discontinue Skype except it's probably not profitable. Corporate profit above all else.

[Burgerbob]

Google meet is fine, the Skype audio was definitely something to miss though, it was quite good for lessons.

[ghmerrill]

I can't imaging why they would discontinue Skype except it's probably not profitable. Corporate profit above all else.

I think it's more a matter of corporate pain in having two products that compete with one another and require two teams to support them. Some years ago, for example, Microsoft axed several of its own existing products in favor of retaining and enhancing Skype. Then -- as is usual in the evolution (or, some might say, devolution) of software products -- a number of warts were successively added onto Skype both in terms of features and availability for new platforms. You can only do that sort of thing for so long (especially to a product originally created with very limited design goals, and which doesn't readily integrate into your existing code base) before things start to crumble beneath your feet. (Although in truth, an argument could be made that MS has previously demonstrated its ability to be tolerant to such crumbling.)

Microsoft's intention is to replace (free) Skype with a likewise free version of Microsoft Teams (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/free). I'll probably pass on that -- as I did on Skype as well -- but time will tell.

[timothy42b]

I use teams at work, well the whole Microsoft suite at that, and Teams is definitely one of those cases of designed by engineers and coders, obviously with the earmark of including everything, but not designed with the relatively unknowledgeable end user touching the interface.

That's exactly how I felt, but I wasn't sure my perception was right.

While working I never used the Onedrive or Microsoft 365 apps, because they were impossibly slow, and given the level of network security we had it might not have been their fault.

Now retired I'm doing some work for my church and found 365 gives you all the Office Suite for free, and 100 Gb storage for pennies. I'm sold.

Except, it's so incredibly unintuitive. How do I print? The Microsoft help site says it's easy, just download your file onto your desktop, open it with ??, and print from there. Really?????? How do I open a file in 365? Gotta go into my settings and set defaults. Etc. Yes you can do everything for free, after a couple hours research, except for the things you can't do at all.

Apologies for the rant. The free Google Sheets is quite limited compared to Excel but dead easy to use, the opposite of 365.

[ghmerrill]

Except, it's so incredibly unintuitive.

This may be Microsoft's motto and guiding principle across the decades -- despite having some of the world's best UI/UX people work there for extended lengths of time.

[NotSkilledHere]

Except, it's so incredibly unintuitive.

This may be Microsoft's motto and guiding principle across the decades -- despite having some of the world's best UI/UX people work there for extended lengths of time.

Unfortunately I believe as you mentioned earlier it's very much a case of designing a better barn door after horses have run out. And very very unfortunately, that is how many organizations appear to have tackled the UI/UX problem. they have the coders and engineers make everything first and then have the UI/UX people scratch their heads and come up with what only "looks" like a good UI.

I run into this problem with the place I work. Product that is developed from the dev team to field to production has lots of extra buttons and features that we dont really touch except for all but the most picky customers and we can't find the buttons that we actually need because they are all in sub menus that nobody can find in a timely manner. however, product that is derived from what we, solution architects and sales/presales teams draw up and propose, tend to have all the features and buttons we need properly available after it's sent to the dev team.

a lot of management in big companies unfortunately see UI/UX as the last step of development rather than being bookends to development.

perhaps this is why Apple products were always seen as so easy to use and intuitive, not that windows was difficult but apple products were decidedly more user friendly by public opinion. Steve Jobs was real picky about the UX and would trouble the entire dev team to reprogram and recode around UI/UX...

I use teams at work, well the whole Microsoft suite at that, and Teams is definitely one of those cases of designed by engineers and coders, obviously with the earmark of including everything, but not designed with the relatively unknowledgeable end user touching the interface.

That's exactly how I felt, but I wasn't sure my perception was right.

While working I never used the Onedrive or Microsoft 365 apps, because they were impossibly slow, and given the level of network security we had it might not have been their fault.

Now retired I'm doing some work for my church and found 365 gives you all the Office Suite for free, and 100 Gb storage for pennies. I'm sold.

Except, it's so incredibly unintuitive. How do I print? The Microsoft help site says it's easy, just download your file onto your desktop, open it with ??, and print from there. Really?????? How do I open a file in 365? Gotta go into my settings and set defaults. Etc. Yes you can do everything for free, after a couple hours research, except for the things you can't do at all.

Apologies for the rant. The free Google Sheets is quite limited compared to Excel but dead easy to use, the opposite of 365.

Honestly the thing is with microsoft is originally all these applications were separate. and then they wanted to smash them all together. now they have 365 and sharepoint and onedrive and a bunch of more or less redundant applications and versions. their solution is to hit delete or merge on many things. which...works? all the features are present..but it's not intuitive to a "power user" and even less intuitive to people further down the food chain. and they dont want to risk recoding them right this second in fear that it messes something up. especially with cloud file storage.

[ghmerrill]

Unfortunately I believe as you mentioned earlier it's very much a case of designing a better barn door after horses have run out. And very very unfortunately, that is how many organizations appear to have tackled the UI/UX problem. they have the coders and engineers make everything first and then have the UI/UX people scratch their heads and come up with what only "looks" like a good UI.

A lot of this came from the move to outsource the development itself -- to the lowest bidder in cultures whose approach often conflicts with those of the primary user base. Very quickly, those bidders offered one stop shopping by providing -- in addition to software design and coding -- "business analysis" services, UI/UX design, and testing. So they get to do the design, the coding, and testing themselves -- and report on the testing results. What could go wrong? Results should not have been surprising, but since the decisions were being made quite far above and divorced from the level of most users, upper management was happy to meet its own goals (which often meant simply completing and deploying a product, no matter what it's quality).

a lot of management in big companies unfortunately see UI/UX as the last step of development rather than being bookends to development.

When they see it as a step at all -- most (like many software engineers) are unable to distinguish requirements from design from implementation from testing.

[Posaunus]

Speaking of unintuitive (to the uninitiated / non-professionals in the crowd, not familiar with the jargon), I had to do a search to learn that UI / UX means
User Interface / User Experience.
I guess I need a glossary!

[ghmerrill]

You shouldn't need to know what it means. The apps should just work for you.

[BGuttman]

I was exposed to two extremes in software development. Coder 1 said "give me the inputs and outputs and get out of my way." Coder 2 spent time asking what the end user expected from the program and how they wanted to use it. Guess which program worked better.

[ghmerrill]

My wife (as the UI/UX design expert) and I (as the AI and overall designer and implementer) once developed, for a large international pharma company, an "intelligent information retrieval" application for use by pharmaceutical scientists. It took most of a year, and a lot of the early period was devoted to going into labs on two continents, having lengthy talks with scientists, and seeing how they were currently doing things, what they were using, what their goals were, and what their complaints were concerning what they then had available. The scientists voiced their frustration with having tried to get people in application development/deployment groups to listen to their very pressing needs.

When we deployed our (web-based) application, which used AI-enhanced semantic techniques to simultaneously search multiple data sources of different types, it was universally acclaimed by the scientists for whom it had been designed. But the comment of my immediate boss at the time was that this was not a good thing because the application was so easy to use that this made it appear as though it had required little effort from our group to produce it, and so the efforts of the group would not be properly appreciated. She (literally -- in these exact words) said it should have been made more difficult to use so that the users and upper management would see how hard our group was working. This is one example of what I regard as a particular "business culture" interfering with the quality of software applications design and implementation.

A paper on this project and application was later published in the proceedings of an international chemical informatics conference -- listing three authors who had nothing to do with the analysis, design or implementation of the application. I suppose that was only fair, since I had left the company at that time.

[slidesix]

Hi Doug! I'd like to arrange some lessons over Skype. I am a returning player after many years and looking to get off on the right foot! I understand you may be busy for the next few weeks so I can be understanding and work with your schedule. Let me know. Thanks! Aaron