Set up your camera, microphone and sound for a music class

Wear headphones, allow your browser to use the camera and microphone, and pick your best microphone in the class room's Settings panel. Run through the checks below a day before your first class.

Allow the camera and microphone in your browser

1. Use an up-to-date web browser on a laptop or desktop computer.
2. When kalasudha.com asks to use your camera and microphone, choose Allow.
3. Pressed Block by mistake? In Chrome or Edge, click the icon to the left of the web address and set Camera and Microphone to Allow. In Safari, open the Safari menu and choose Settings for kalasudha.com. Then reload the page.

Wear headphones

Without headphones, your instructor's playing comes out of your speakers, goes back into your microphone, and they hear themselves a moment late. Headphones stop that echo. Wired headphones add less delay than Bluetooth ones.

Set up your microphone for an instrument or voice

• Switch off voice processing. If your computer or headset has a noise reduction, voice isolation or audio enhancement setting for the microphone, turn it off for class. These settings treat a held note, a drone or a tanpura as background noise and cut it.
• Mind the distance. Keep the microphone about an arm's length from loud instruments such as tabla or harmonium. Sit closer for voice, flute or violin.
• Use your best microphone. If you own a USB microphone, plug it in before you join. In the class room, press the gear icon in the bottom bar to open Settings and choose it under Microphone.

Set up your camera

• Frame your face, both hands and your instrument. Your instructor needs to see fingering and strokes.
• Face a window or lamp. A bright window behind you turns you into a silhouette.
• Rest your computer on something firm so the picture stays still.

Test before your first class

1. A day before, record a minute of playing or singing with your computer's voice recorder and listen back. If loud passages crackle, move the microphone further away.
2. On the day, join as soon as the room opens, 5 minutes before the start. See Join your video class.
3. The Ready to Join page uses your default camera and microphone. Once inside, press the gear icon and check the Camera and Microphone lists. A Speaker list also appears when your browser lists output devices. If it does not appear, choose your headphones in your computer's sound settings.
4. Before you start, ask your instructor whether they can see and hear you.

If this does not work

If sound or picture still fails once the class starts, follow Fix sound or video problems during a class. For anything else, email [email protected] with your device, your browser and the class start time.