What you need for online voice lessons
So you’re considering diving into online voice lessons! Here are some helpful tips about equipment and set up that will be useful to you.
The most important thing for online voice lessons is a strong internet connection. Make sure you can set yourself up close to your router or, even better, hook up directly to an ethernet port for the fastest connection. If your internet connection isn’t great, try doing your lessons on your smartphone instead of your tablet or computer. Sometimes the phones have much clearer video and audio than our more advanced electronics!
Give yourself space to move around. You want to be able to flail your arms, stand, sit, and move your body in general. Singing lessons get physical, and you want to feel like you have uninhibited freedom to move around.
Headphones! At least for the warm-ups and technical exercises at the beginning of the lesson. These can be earbuds, wireless headphones, over the ear headphones, whatever you have on hand that works for you. This helps keep the audio clear even though we have sound coming from my side and your side. Without headphones, Zoom will pick either the sound coming out or going into your device and it will cut the other sound out.
Good angle and lighting! Prop your device up somewhere where I can see you from the waist up (ideally), and where you’re not too backlit (i.e. don’t set yourself up with a bright window behind you or a lamp). Against a wall in a well-lit room works great! If all I can see is your nose hairs we’ve got a problem.
A binder is needed to keep all of your lyric sheets, sheet music, and method books if we choose to use them, organized. You will also need a pencil!
A glass of water or water bottle - always great to have this nearby! We don’t need water until we really need water, amiright?
A second device to play your backing tracks from. There is too much lag through Zoom for me to play backing tracks from my side and have them sync with your beautiful singing coming back through the computer - they end up out of time on my end. I recommend having a second device (phone, tablet, ipod, etc.) to play your backing tracks from so that a) you can customize the loudness to your comfort level and b) all of the sound comes through cleanly from your side.
In Zoom, go to your Audio Preferences and check out the Suppress Background Noise section: select the Low setting. This will ensure Zoom doesn’t categorize your beautiful music as background noise and cut it out. This is a very important step!
Patience. sometimes technology throws us curveballs (or updates), and we need to take a bit of time to make sure you’re properly set up - this is normal and expected! This is not wasted lesson time.
I think that’s it!
It sounds like an extensive, complicated list but I assure you if you follow these steps before entering your first online singing lesson we’ll be able to dive right into the singing rather than spending a large chunk of time getting you set up. That being said, there will be days where we need to make a couple of adjustments due to app updates or internet issues. This is the nature of the beast, and if you bring your patience I’ll bring mine too.
As always, let me know if you have any questions. See you in the studio!
Arianna teaches voice and piano lessons online and from her at-home studio in Maple Ridge, BC. She creates a welcoming learning environment for students of all ages – kids, teens, and adults.
Study with Arianna
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