Music School During a Pandemic- How Covid-19 Did and Didn’t Affect My Freshman Year

The performing arts are, and have always been, some of the most hands-on skills out there, often requiring physical contact between instructors and students, students together, and with shared equipment, often in large groups with even larger audiences. Music students share pianos and breathe into instruments, sing into open air. Sometimes we share mallets, and we definitely aren’t hauling around personal marimbas. In a dance classroom, two dancers practice a lift while their teacher spots them. Somewhere on stage, actors are playing an improvisation game where two students hold hands. In a studio, a professor presses on the back of a student, applying pressure to encourage a deeper breath.

Suddenly, in 2020, we were told that we couldn’t do any of those things any more. No more shared equipment and rehearsal spaces, no handshakes or hand-holding, no breathing out in the open, and certainly no more physical contact. These seemingly unimportant restrictions had devastating consequences on the performing arts. Especially vocal performance.

Of course, that isn’t to say that other instruments and areas of performance were not impacted. Of course they were! But breath, the very thing that makes singing possible, was what carried the virus, and therefore had to be restricted.

I would say that overall, my first year of music school wasn’t as heavily impacted by the pandemic than I thought it would be. This is partially because of the hard work that my school and community did to ensure that we could have the bare minimum, instead of nothing like other schools had. First, every student was given a mask that could accommodate them and their instrument. For singers, that meant that we got larger, duckbill-like masks that allowed us to breathe deeply and sing without sucking in and chewing up the mask. For brass and winds, that meant they got masks with a hole near the mouth so that they could use their mouthpieces, plus an additional bag to cover the body of the instrument where air could leak from the keys, and bell covers where needed. Everyone else wore normal masks.

Clear plastic screens were also installed throughout studio rooms, so that students working with accompanists could be separated even in the same room. Tents were erected outside for rehearsals when the weather was good. Stages were spiked with tape to mark six feet sections for band, orchestra, and dance. In addition, air-out times for indoor and outdoor spaces where instilled, and timers were placed in every practice room so that no one entered during an air-out period. This gave us a shot at some sense of normalcy. We could practice and have lessons, and even some ensemble time!

But, as singers, this got a little bit complicated. Outside of brass and woodwinds, the distance for the spread of droplets is quite significant for singers. There is no tubing that slows down the droplets or collects them, so even with masks, after 30 minutes or so, rehearsals had to pause to air out. This made making progress in choir rehearsals near impossible. My ensemble rehearsals were 30 minutes one day, and an hour the other day, each with a pause to air out and move locations. The interruption to air out broke my focus. With only a total of an hour and a half or rehearsal a week, it was difficult to make music.

Also, we had to stand six feet apart from one another and in straight lines. This might seem insignificant, but those horseshoe shaped lines choirs stand in allow us to hear one another, strengthening our tuning. When we stood so far apart from one another, it was hard to hear the other parts, leading to tuning and blending problems, since we couldn’t hear out voices in relation to others. Plus, those masks make a buzzing sensation that messes with the way we hear ourselves, almost like a tiny mute.

Despite all of these challenges, we found a way to make things work. My freshman year was amazing, even if the music situation was less than ideal. I got to sing in lessons and with a choir. I even got to have a little concert at the end of the year. The performing arts are making a comeback, and when all is said and done, when we can sing mask free in ensembles and for huge audiences, we will be stronger than before, because we were flexible and made a way for art to happen, when the pandemic was working against us.