With many schools around the country forced to close, students have had to resort to the likes of ‘Zoom’ and ‘Microsoft teams’. In what has been a bleak and draining pandemic – education seems for few , a light in the darkness. With uncertainty and speculations in the media on the hopes of returning to school in March, many students – including myself- seem lost without guidance. This devastating blow is impacting many and in light of recent news events on the negligence of the entertainment and music industry, it has left me wondering how the younger generation of this profession are grappling to terms with new adjustments. Karina Mya, a student who is currently studying Level 3 music performance and production in college spoke to me, answering my intriguing questions on how she has had to adapt to this new process of learning. Our talk went as followed:

Question: Do you think that remote learning has somewhat hindered your passion for the industry?

Karina replied: 'I felt that during the first lockdown, I did lose a lot of motivation. Being at home with no inspiration, finding the urge to practise my instruments and learning new aspects was definitely hard. My online lessons for music have been fun and interesting more so since January, and my teachers have been very understanding with current circumstances- yet it is frustrating how we can’t collaborate with other kids in our class and have had to depend on more virtual resources for making music’.

Question: Has the standard and quality of your online lessons ‘come up to par’ with what you had initially anticipated?

Karina responded: 'I didn’t really think much of my lessons being online when we first got told, but as online learning started, I had realised I had to find motivation again to start practising and making new music since this lockdown could last for a while. My teachers are also in tricky positions since they can’t do practical lessons, but they try and make the lessons as enjoyable as possible which is appreciated in such unfavourable circumstances’.

Question: Do you think that to excel in this course you are studying, is it imperative to be immersed in an environment by students of your chosen field?

Karina answered: 'I believe it is extremely vital for students embarking on a music course to be in an environment where they can collaborate with fellow artists and producers. Music is not a one-person job; it requires a group of people to be able to create something new and different. Despite this and the current predicament we are in, by having access to instruments myself as well as online software’s such as ‘Logic Pro’ - it has been a huge help for students like me for the path we are striving to go down. It has also somewhat provided comfort for me to establish a creative environment of my own' 

Question: Where do you think this adapted experience will take you in the future- have you learnt to overcome certain boundaries in the process?

Karina returned: 'I have definitely learnt that I need to be more proactive in a field like this as new music and artists are emerging every day or so. Being able to have more time and undisrupted help has expanded on my knowledge about music and has opened up more ideas within the industry that I never thought I could go into. I’ve learnt to try new things when making music, whether that’s trying different genres to tackling the technical aspect of learning a new software’.

She concluded that upon her return to college she would hope for more ‘hands on’ industry experiences such as live shows or observing work behind the scenes to compensate the lost time. She hopes to fulfil her aims in relishing all knowledge available to her as a young and upcoming artist. To conclude, as shown through Karina’s experience, it is at times like this where we truly value the power of knowledge and education – we as a community, battling our low morale, should be able to applaud ourselves on pursuing our ambitions despite the frequent challenges we have faced.