Online Private Singing Lessons for Beginners—

The Top 3 Things to Look for in Beginner Online Lessons:

Clean, Two-Way Audio for Learning

As a beginner, you will learn better with clear, garble-free, two way audio. It helps you hear exactly what you need to do, and me hear exactly what you're doing. It's also just much more pleasant.

Zoom is one-way audio and the audio can be frequently garbled. Ask any teacher you're considering about what they can do to provide better-than-Zoom audio.

Faster Audio for Learning and Songs—Exclusively Here:

Faster Audio for Exercises:

Sometimes beginning singers need a little more guidance with time or pitch, especially when they're just beginning. The large 100ms delay built into Zoom's design means that teachers playing along with students is impossible.

With the right affordable technology, for the cost of a few lessons, students can connect with their teacher in true real-time, and learning will progress more quickly and smoothly, as a result.

Faster Audio for Song Work:

When both teacher and student have the exact right equipment, it's possible to for the audio between the teacher and student to travel, round-trip, incredibly quickly. This means we can potentially play songs together, live. This has huge benefits for the singer through all the musicianship-based learning that occurs when singing with live piano. This also has a huge impact on 'in-person' feeling of lessons, and finally, on 'joy.' 

With the right setup, the student will hear the audio as 'perfectly in sync.' The audio that the teacher receives back will have a small delay, but it's workable.

The length of cable between teacher and student matters. I can currently offer 'true real-time' lessons to the Vancouver BC area, Seattle area, and much of the surrounding regions. If you are beyond a 200mi radius of Vancouver, we can still connect relatively quickly and cleanly via Cleanfeed.

An Effective Teacher.

It’s difficult to assess a teacher from reviews, credentials, or content, alone. But, combined, reviews plus credentials, plus how the teacher backs up their understanding via content—this can provide a better picture.

There’s also word-of-mouth, which is both powerful and sometimes powerfully misleading. I recommend you definitely ask around, but also go back to reviews, credentials, and content.

One Great Credential:

One thing you want to know about a teacher is if they are trained in acoustic vocal pedagogy (AVP). There are other important concepts beyond this, but for skilled pop and theatre singing, understanding of vocal acoustics and how to teach students according to acoustics can be a powerful differentiator.

Having training in acoustics doesn’t mean a teacher can teach it effectively, though. Conversely, any teacher who is getting great results with higher mix and belt range for clients is probably modifying singers’ timbres, and therefore employing acoustic pedagogy somewhat effectively, regardless of whether they are trained in AVP, or not. Be picky about effecitveness and, ideally, try several lessons with a few different teachers to get a broad perspective of what ‘effective’ feels like.

The process of finding a teacher who can provide truly transformative results can be challenging, but these are my best quick tips. Good luck!

One Key Test with a New Teacher:

Here’s the shortcut: Can the teacher help you access higher notes, with ease and a clean, pop sound in the first lesson?

To upgrade your singing ability, you likely want regular lessons with a teacher you know can get you into your mix, quickly and easily, because that’s where you’ll want to spend a lot of your time, as soon as possible.

So audition your teacher! Don’t choose anyone who can’t get you connecting higher notes with clean tone and no strain in the first lesson.*

*Note: Currently, for December 2020, for singers looking for voice lessons in Vancouver—or online private voice lessons from anywhere—I am offering a free first lesson in which we will do exactly this.

What Equipment do I Need for Online Singing Lessons?

...and how much will it cost?

First, assuming you have WiFi and a laptop, you don't really need to get anything to have beneficial online lessons. But there are also a series of upgrades you can make to make the whole experience of online learning much more musical, joy-filled, and ‘in-person’ feeling.

Learn more about Equipment for Online Singing Lessons, including what you can get, what order you should get it in, where to get it, and what it will cost, here.