A relative is 14 years old and she is starting to see a new singing tutor. The tutor is elderly and wants her to get a cassette recorder. The girl’s guardian talked to me on the phone about it. She said they were over $100. I thought she meant a digital notetaker. I told her that the girl’s iPhone is a lot better - it allows recordings to be given a name and you can easily switch between the recordings and skip to any spot within a recording.
But the guardian ended up buying a cassette recorder (with built in CD player). It doesn’t even have a counter which shows the position in the tape recording. It is quite bulky and when she would be practicing songs she’d have to fast-forward/rewind and guess and check until she gets to the song she wants to sing along to…
Well she is pretty elderly. And apparently all of her other students have also bought cassette recorders. The girl’s guardian was saying it could cost $140 (Australian) but now on eBay they’re about $30 for Walkman-type ones. A woman doesn’t want me to talk to the people involved about it so it’s good to vent here. I imagine it would be difficult to find blank cassettes.
BTW the girl wants piano and singing lessons (well at least her guardian does). The tutor said she’d only tutor the girl for singing if she will have piano lessons as well with her…
I had hoped that she’d just use her iPhone - I said what matters is what works, not what the tradition is.
wanting to use a cassette recorder is not unreasonable for an elderly person.
to go beyond single function buttons to a context menu can be hard to learn for an elderly person.
even if they might learn the process there are fine motor skills which may be lacking. i know elderly that have a hard time with a mouse. a touch pad or touch screen, especially small, is impossible.
Time for a new singing teacher. Try a local university music department, most faculty teach private lessons on the side. Often semi-pro local opera singers are willing to teach as well, again, check with the vocal faculty at a local university.
Indeed, cassette recorders used to be common enough that I’d imagine it wouldn’t be that hard to find a relatively inexpensive used one (on eBay, or ask the neighbors to check their attic).
A look on Amazon shows that blank cassette tapes are still readily available (at least online; I don’t know whether to expect to be able to find any in stores), and new cassette recorders are available for far less than what you paid—but that’s in America, not Australia. (Also, not surprisingly, there are several cassette-to-MP3 converter devices for sale.)
The girl could operate it herself also the tutor plays the piano so she has pretty good fine motor skills. I think she just isn’t very open minded or maybe students haven’t stood up to her.