I have been giving online private singing lessons for 25+ years. Back when I first started in mid 90s, SKYPE was the only platform that provided face-to-face access to connect with someone anywhere in the world. I’d never heard about it until, after reading my first book, a singer from Italy emailed and asked if I would give him some online voice lessons. I was hesitant and skeptical, but he didn’t care. He wanted me to try and instructed me to download SKYPE. It was a super easy download. Click on DOWNLOAD and it’s done.
I didn’t know how this was going to work especially because I didn’t have a webcam. He told me I needed to set up a PayPal account so he could send me the money and wanted a lesson the very next day. That meant there was no time to buy a webcam because I had to teach all day that day. I taught from 10am – 7pm four days a week. He’d contacted me on a Thursday and since I was taking Friday off, we scheduled it.
No webcam. Hmmmm… How was I going to be able to do this? Apparently Oscar knew something about me that I did not. He told me after reading my first book that he had a gut feeling about my ability to do this without a webcam. He was certain I had an especially gifted ear and was unaware of it. He was right. That first lesson was even more effective than my in- person lessons. Came to find out that there is a name for ears like mine. It’s called clairaudient ears; a psychic gift that enables me to hear and detect issues in your voice that need to be addressed, tackled, and/or corrected that others cannot. It is my ear that sets me apart from most of the other teachers. Even my esteemed and very successful colleagues know this about me so when one of them suddenly runs into an unexpected trouble spot, they seek me out to correct and eliminate it. Most of them have been out of state or live overseas.
When Covid-19 infiltrated every city and country in the world to become the first pandemic in over 100 years and everyone went into lockdown, I moved all my in-person lessons online. Of course, by then I had a webcam. I’d purchased it the following week after that very first lesson online. Most of my in-person students had their reservations about working solely online, having never done it. But I asked them to give it just one shot and determine for themselves whether they thought it was worthy enough to continue. I already knew these lessons would be even more effective because for years I’d been teaching students from as far away as China with great success.
After each one of those students had their first online lesson, not a single one wanted to take voice lessons in person ever again. First reason, these online private singing lessons were even more effective because online requires 150% of my concentration to virtually climb inside your body and correct all that you are doing that’s keeping you from getting the voice you intuitively know you have but haven’t been able to access. Second reason, you can take the lessons from within the comfort of your own home. Wow… imagine rolling out of bed in your pajamas if you so choose. Since you can rarely see each other in full view, all you have to do is boot up your computer, connect, and we are up and running. No drive time. No traffic. No stress. Not even pants or a dress…
During lockdown I made the decision to never teach in person again — and every new student I got going forward found these lessons to be very valuable. Some found them to be better than any lesson they had ever taken with any other teacher. Then there are those who don’t even want to be visible during a lesson and because of my ear, I am able to give them lessons by telephone only.
By phone, I put the student on speaker and can hear every little thing that’s going on that makes it right when it’s right, wrong when it’s wrong. I can imitate wrong and explain what I have just done asking the student to listen for it in my voice. I give easy to comprehend explanations for both right and wrong ways after they’ve sung one run of a vocal exercise, or after having sung a song (or section of a song). After which I will ask the student to listen back to what they’d recorded to see if they can hear these things for themselves. With or without webcam, the goal here is to teach the student how to become their own teacher.
Online singing lessons for beginners: It is imperative that you have access to a keyboard. In singing, we prefer the use of the keyboard because it is the only instrument that mirrors the sound of a voice. If not, a guitar will do. You do not have to be proficient at playing either instrument. You only need to know where and what all the notes are between middle C and high C (technically, for those who play, C4 to C5) and to be able to pluck out those notes even if it is just with one finger.
Mistakes playing the exercises are expected, especially when you are just learning. Additionally, if you are plucking out the notes of an exercise and singing along with them, you get to see with your own eyes exactly which notes are where the difficulties show up. Same thing when you get to a section of a song that has always been a problem for you. It is then that you can turn to the keyboard and locate exactly which note(s) this occurs on and maybe even see for yourself that in exercises you have no problem with those notes. That’s when you start asking yourself why isn’t this the case with the song?
Answer: Because…it’s a total head trip! You see or feel those notes coming up in the song where you have always had trouble and are so conditioned to think that you will never hit those notes because you never have — and your mind is on auto-pilot! It tells you it can’t, and so you don’t! You aren’t even aware that it’s told you that. This is when we get into talking about just how powerful that mind of yours is.
The voice is meant to be your servant, not the master. Yet you have been a slave to it, letting your voice take total control of how you sing rather than you taking control of the instrument and becoming its master. Only when you become the master and gain control will you feel freedom when you sing. Only then will you feel how easy it is. Only then will it be loads of fun. Only then will you grow to love your voice.
That is the whole point of taking lessons. And just think; you can have the most successful lessons you’ve ever had by taking those lessons online and from within the comfort of your own home. You will get your voice. You will be able to sing any song you want if you choose a teacher to learn from who is as skilled at this doing online as I am. If you are committed, dedicated, and all in, and if that teacher is a right fit for you and really knows what they are doing, it’s guaranteed.