It's jury time for USC Aiken's music students

For musicians at USCA, finals are referred to as “juries.” 

Students perform a jury in the fall semester and the spring semester in order to move up to higher performance courses. 

In an ideal setting, a music student is required to perform a live performance including a solo, etudes or technical studies, scales and sight reading in front of their instrumental professor and their director of bands. 

With the novel coronavirus causing schools to remain closed for the duration of the semester, juries have been modified to fit the current situation. 

Music students are still required to perform a solo, etude or technical studies, scales and a sight reading.

The sight reading portion of the jury is performed live over Zoom, Blackboard Collaborate Ultra or any other method of video conferencing. 

For the solo, etude or studies and scales, students must take a video of each different part and submit the recordings to their respective professors. 

The video must be taken where the student can be seen, and the student should be dressed appropriately. 

Though this method of recording is innovative, it opens up a few possible problems such as terrible sound quality, too much background noise and submission problems. 

A perk of recording is that if a student messes up, they have the option to re-record and submit the best possible recording.