And now local beer to follow up on the local coffee. Came out the bottle a little fizzy, but given a few minutes it’s turned out very nice.

So happy to find Wooden Hill, a local roastery and cafe. Fairtrade, recyclable packaging, wildflower seeds built into the label… they even plant a tree for every 100kg sold (600+ trees so far). I would say it’s a pretty excellent fit with my consumer ethics. Better hope the coffee tastes nice!

Much better start for England today. Root and Leach in the wickets. I just hope it inspires the batsmen into making a few more runs 🏏

Before last March I hadn’t used Zoom, or the meetings function in Microsoft Teams. Now I’ve done over 250 drum lessons on Teams, and a similar number of Zoom sessions. Both have made improvements to their services in that time, and the music education community have found ways to make the services work better for them.

The ‘Original Sound’ function on Zoom makes a huge difference, as it stops the drums being filtered out as background noise. It’s not ideal for students who don’t wear headphones though, as it also reduces the echo cancellation.

Teams is much less customisable than Zoom - you can select different input and output devices, but otherwise it’s fixed. Fortunately it’s a little more music-friendly than Zoom’s default settings, with the background noise filtering a bit less aggressive. The problem comes with automatic gain control on the input, and for some pupils once they’ve played the drums I can’t hear their speaking voice for 20-30 seconds until Teams readjusts.

Airpods are another interesting variable. Whilst they’re great for flexibility as the student isn’t limited by wires, they seem to do their own audio processing on the mic input that messes with the sound of the drums.

Overall, having started off preferring the extra flexibility of Zoom, I’ve actually come to like the simplicity of Teams. I still wouldn’t choose it for scenarios where sound quality is the top priority (Zoom’s HiFi for Musicians settings win out here), but for getting going quickly, and not wasting time having pupils poke around trying to optimise their audio, Teams actually performs well.