Saving―and Enhancing―Music Education With Online Learning

edCircuit note: D. Travis Washington, a general music teacher at P.S. 072 in the Bronx, wrote this account in November 2020, during remote learning, about moving a school choir program online and teaching fourth and fifth graders to produce their own songs. Washington’s account is unchanged below. After it, an update looks at where school music access stands and how teachers can use recording and production tools well, whichever product a school chooses.

By D. Travis Washington

As an educator and general music teacher at P.S. 072, Dr. William Dorney, in the Bronx, NY, I work with a diverse student body in a highly under-resourced area. The school is an important hub in many ways, and it’s particularly important in bringing music, ballroom dancing, theater, and other great experiences to students. I recognize the importance of that fact and remain a staunch advocate for better music funding in New York schools.

I teach Choir and lead the Young Vocal Scholars Program, and before COVID arrived, we were excited to move forward on the culmination of learning through live performances. With school closure, all that changed, and we were forced to adapt to virtual learning. Through the initial transition, we discovered that online learning options such as Soundtrap could not only extend projects we were currently working on but expand music learning to previously unimaginable heights. 

Challenges and successes of the transition to remote learning

When Covid hit and we couldn’t continue with the traditional choir program, my school looked for remote solutions. Soundtrap was exactly what we needed. We began conducting Young Vocal Scholars choir sessions remotely through Soundtrap and filled our extra Soundtrap seats with students from the District 8 Choir who weren’t being served music at all―doing similar projects that we had been creating previously in my classes. It was incredible to suddenly recognize that there were far more students interested in music who could connect via their laptops and tablets at home.

We had synchronous sessions five days a week for any 4th or 5th graders who wanted to stop by and participate and held lessons for two hours a day. Hour one was a mini-lesson with specific work assigned and hour two was an instructional lunch period I called “Open Studio.” During the open session, all students would share the projects that they were working on virtually, sharing their screen and Soundtrap tab through Google Chrome.

Various parameters were set to help in the creative process. I found 4th and 5th graders need some extra structure to actualize the recording process fully. My partner teacher Alex Depersia and I started to post the Soundtrap tutorials in Google Classroom with music lessons based on the tutorial’s theme. We produced loops and recordings on mixing volume, automation, and mastering. Every tool we gave, we saw them applying to their music creation, including older projects. We provided a nice pop song structure in simple bar signatures 4/4, 8s, or 16s. Variation was emphasized so that students were mindful of the subtle elements of songwriting. Eventually, the students created full songs and tracks. The most advanced 5th graders were able to write their own raps to go along with the music they produced. Once the project was complete, we added music visualizers with effects, and their finished material was promoted with student privacy in mind.

Virtual learning has its advantages

Quarantine was an advantage in disguise as we were able to get much deeper into our music engagement through Soundtrap than what normal in-class time would typically allow. In the past, I saw most kids once a week, and the most advanced kids three or four times a week for 45 minutes. But now, students became self-motivated and had access to a software they loved, so they just kept creating over the summer, doing far more hours of work than they did during the regular school year. Most kids avoid logging into anything that resembles school, but these students were motivated and excited to learn.

Soundtrap revolutionized my classroom in a virtual setting. Students became more engaged than ever before. My “4-star artists,” as I refer to my highly motivated students, kept making songs. I recall one of them saying to me, “Music class was cool because we sang together, but Soundtrap is cooler because it allows us to make projects together and they sound good.” 

Putting our funding to good use

Presently, New York City is cutting funding for music education because of the economic hardship brought on by the pandemic. Some may believe it’s not possible to continue successfully in a remote environment, but that hasn’t been my experience. Online programs have advanced to the point that music is perfectly positioned to go virtual. 

As I realized that cuts in music programming were taking place, I reached out to social media to get the word out that music education can thrive, maybe even better than within the classic models of classroom teaching by going virtual. Apps and virtual collaboration may soon be the answers for schools and districts experiencing cutbacks and trying to stretch more with less.

1. Futurism – Collaborate With Anyone, Anywhere with This Online Recording Studio from Spotify
2. Soundtrap EDU Blog – Soundtrap Spotlight: Contrast and Dissonance in Music
3. Music Ed Magazine – Combining Soundtrap with Zoom to take Marching Band virtual

Music technology in the classroom: access, evidence and practical choices

Washington’s account describes music technology in the classroom at its most hopeful: students who saw a music teacher once a week kept composing through the summer because the tools let them finish songs they were proud of. Six years later, recording and production software runs in a web browser on the laptops and tablets many schools issued during the pandemic, and the questions for school leaders have changed. The questions now are who has access to music at all, what these tools add, and what to check before students record and share their work.

Who still goes without music

The most complete national picture comes from the Arts Education Data Project, a joint effort of the State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education and Quadrant Research. Its first national status report, released in September 2022, used 2018-19 data from 30,633 schools in 17 states and projected the results nationally. It found that 92 percent of public school students had access to music education in school, while an estimated 3.6 million did not. Students without music were concentrated in large urban districts, in schools with the highest share of students eligible for free or reduced-price meals, and in schools where most students are Black, Hispanic or Native American. Because the figures are projections from pre-pandemic data, they show where gaps sit rather than the exact count today.

New York City, where Washington teaches, shows how funding can swing. City Limits reported in June 2022 that the city had budgeted a record of about $460 million for arts education in 2019-20, much of it unspent during school closures, and $429 million in 2020-21. The state waived minimum elementary arts requirements after schools closed in March 2020, and many arts teachers were reassigned. Advocates were then seeking $100 per student for 2022-23, up from an allocation of $79.62, and asking that the money be required to go to the arts. The same report recalled a 2014 city comptroller finding that 28 percent of city schools had no certified arts teacher, with many of those in the South Bronx and Brooklyn. Washington’s call for steadier music funding was made in that setting.

What production tools add, and what the evidence shows

A digital audio workstation, or DAW, is software for recording, layering and editing sound, the same kind of tool professional producers use. A 2026 scoping review by Uci Rahmawati, Rita Milyartini and Juju Masunah in the Jurnal Teknologi Pendidikan examined 15 publications from 2015 to 2025 on composition learning with DAWs. The studies it covers describe these tools as creative environments that support ideas, revision and collaboration, and they report gains in student independence, production skill and creative exploration. The review also names the weak points: little systematic assessment of what students learned, uneven digital skills among learners, and gaps in facilities and resources. Its studies come from higher education, so the evidence for elementary classrooms like Washington’s rests mostly on teacher accounts. Leaders should read claims about these tools, including product marketing, with that limit in mind.

Washington’s own experience matches the review’s findings in one important respect. Washington found that fourth and fifth graders needed structure before they could create freely, so Washington and a partner teacher posted short tutorials, set a simple song form and taught one production skill at a time. The tool opened the door, but the teaching design is what turned access into finished songs.

Privacy before students record and share

Student recordings, names and photos identify children, and federal rules for children’s online privacy changed recently. As law firm Davis Wright Tremaine summarized in May 2025, the Federal Trade Commission’s amended Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) rule took effect on June 23, 2025, with most provisions to be met by April 22, 2026. It requires companies to keep a written data retention policy and delete children’s information once it is no longer needed, adds biometric identifiers to the definition of personal information, and requires separate parental consent before sharing a child’s information with third parties unless the sharing is integral to the service. The FTC declined to adopt proposed rules specific to education technology and said it would keep enforcing COPPA in schools under its existing guidance. For a music teacher, that means using tools the district has approved, reading how long the service keeps student recordings, and getting family permission before sharing work publicly, as Washington did when promoting the students’ songs with privacy in mind.

Practical steps for leaders

1. Start from the music curriculum and the students who lack access. The National Association for Music Education’s position statement on equity and access holds that all students deserve access to music education and asks programs to remove barriers such as cost. Technology can extend a program, but it works best alongside a certified music teacher.
2. Choose tools that run on the devices students already have, and check that students can use them at home without fast internet before assigning work outside school.
3. Build structure into the units: model a skill, set a song form, then open time for students to create.
4. Decide how learning will be assessed, using a simple rubric for composition, technique and reflection, since the research flags assessment as the weak link.
5. Keep singing, playing and live performance in the program. Washington’s student put it simply: singing together was cool, and making projects together was cooler. Both have a place.
6. Watch for artificial intelligence features in music tools. NAfME has formed an AI task force to track policy and classroom use, and districts should review those features under the same privacy rules.

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