Take music lessons without ever leaving home ? really!

"They Laughed When I Sat Down At the Piano But When I Started to Play!" read one of the most famous ad copy lines of all time. It ran for decades in magazines, selling the mail-order U.S. School of Music. Whether anybody ever learned to play Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata by mail is unclear, but it was clear that people want to learn music without leaving home. And now they can - and do.

As a front-page story in The New York Times reported, online music lessons have become so commonplace, they may soon become the rule rather than the exception. Skype and other videochat have gone beyond simple verbal communication, of course, and in recent years "it is upending and democratizing the world of music lessons."

In the past, music students and their teachers were limited by geography. Now, "Students who used to limit the pool of potential teachers to those within a 20-mile radius from their homes now take lessons from teachers -- some with world-class credentials -- on other coasts or continents."

Online students come from all ages, abilities and levels of play, but one group has surprisingly benefited from telemusic teaching - older students who want to learn and instrument later in life. The story quoted Ken Tucker, 67, who wanted to learn the bagpipes. "It used to be an adult learner couldn't get a teacher, because people didn't want to bother with someone who didn't have a future," said Tucker, but he now studies with a piper 95 miles away - with no time lost to travel.

Online video has proved to be a boon to the low-paid and uncertain profession of free-lance music teacher. "Laurel Thomsen, a violin and viola instructor, held on to all of her Skype students when she moved recently from Monterey, Calif., to Santa Cruz. 'Less and less are in-person people, and more and more are Skype people contacting me,' she said."

They Laughed When I Sat Down At the Piano (John Caples, powerwriting.com)

With Enough Bandwidth, Many Join the Band (NY Times, Jan. 10, 2012)