Teaching Sax: Video Lessons That Actually Sound Good
A custom virtual classroom and dashboard I built to support my return to saxophone teaching—specifically tuned to solve the audio problems music teachers face.
Teaching Sax Classroom Screenshot
Take a screenshot of your active application on your Mac (e.g. using Cmd+Shift+4) and save it as teaching-sax.png inside the /public/images/ folder to replace this placeholder!
Project Tech Stack
Why I Built It
When I decided to get back into woodwind teaching, I wanted a clean way to manage the studio. But looking at the available software out there, everything felt clunky, dated, and built mostly for piano lessons.
I saw a great opportunity to build something custom that I could use in my own lessons every week. By using the app with real students, I could test features immediately, see what actually helps kids practice, and iterate on the code in real-time.
The Core Feature: High-Fidelity, Low-Latency Audio Video
If you've ever tried to teach music lessons over standard video platforms like Zoom or Teams, you know they are designed for voice conversation, not music. Standard noise-cancellation algorithms treat a sustained saxophone or flute note as "background noise" and instantly mute it, resulting in a frustrating, choppy experience.
To fix this, I built a custom virtual classroom integration using the **Daily.co WebRTC SDK** with uncompressed, stereo audio channels. This prevents the browser from muting instrumental sounds and ensures we can play together with clear, natural tone quality and minimal latency.
Key Features
- No-Friction Assignment Flow: I can write feedback during our video session and send it straight to the student's practice panel in one click—no post-lesson typing required.
- Practice Recording Log: Students record audio snippets of their homework directly in the web app. It creates a simple history log so we can hear their tone improvement over weeks and months.
- Parent Portal: Parents paying for lessons get a clean, simple dashboard to see practice consistency and listen to homework recordings without surveilling the student's active practice space.
- Stripe Billing Automations: Handles lesson reservations, automated subscription invoices, and late-cancel terms without awkward follow-up messages.