Like many of my colleagues in the music world, the events of the past few weeks have made me re-evaluate and change all my singing teaching from face-to face interaction to online lessons.

To tell the truth, unlike many, I found the challenge somewhat exciting. Of course I didn’t want to stop seeing students in the flesh, but I could see a raft of advantages. Not least of them being that neither me or my student had to travel. I had visions of swathes of time being freed up as I didn’t need to make the journey into work. I could stay in my lovely front/music room all day surrounded by my own scores, snacking at will and petting my furry friends between lessons.

Was I in for a shock! After frantically setting up what I thought was the perfect set up, it became clear that all was not as I imagined.

In a family where 4 of us are using our serviceable (but not super-duper) internet, the worry was that the system would not cope with our demand. My husband, also trying to conduct meetings was relegated to the kitchen and the children, their rooms to work. The signal although it sometimes glitches was just about able to cope but I ended up having to ditch the iPad Pro and phone to use my daughter’s laptop because I had to set up various settings on zoom to prevent loss of volume. Most of my school work had to take place via teams but I found I could do this and use zoom which proved to be the most helpful platform. I realised that I still have much to learn about how to split screen, have a waiting room and many other things, but in truth, the system worked. (Apart from the comedy moment when I found myself looking at a screen which I had zoomed 250%, with the top of the student’s head having been popped off by the now ridiculously big text and no earthly idea how to sort it!)

So what’s different?

The time-lag is a big issue, especially as the nature of singing teaching often necessitates giving students support in the form of piano or voice cues. There is no ability to accompany in real-time at all. This I knew from trying out the platform with my husband – in the next room. I could hear the real time voice and then a second later the on-screen version! So this means that backing tracks on the side of the student become your friend. Of course you need to make sure that you send these beforehand and that your student can play them their side.

So this means that not only do you as a teacher have to be super-prepared, but your students also have to take more responsibility in their lesson. They need to have downloaded and stored any files you’ve sent in an easily accessible place so they are instantly ready to call upon on a DIFFERENT DEVICE from the one on which they are making their online call. Well, of course that hadn’t always happened so it can be a frustrating old time sitting watching your student make a frantic search on their phone or ipad to find the email you sent through a week ago ,or try to read music from an iPhone! The more organised your student is, the more effective your lesson is and the better the outcomes for all concerned. I have been incredibly impressed that some students have immediately realised this and are business-like in their acceptance of their part. Likewise, those who find the organisation of their time and resources difficult for face-to-face lessons are being forced to get these skills up to the mark and I hope when online lessons are no longer necessary, we will see a marked change in their skills in this area.

So I’ve noticed that different learners find the lack of immediate encouragement and support very hard. I often sing along, or play along and make encouraging comments in my lessons as students are singing. This just isn’t possible, so those who immediately have to start again after one mistake or constantly self-doubt are being forced to carry on. What I notice is that once you have started a backing track, the pause button is your friend! And if you miss the first round of exercises because you weren’t ready, leave the thing going and join in as soon as you can afterwards. Familiarity with the backings you are sent is invaluable, so using these as a resource for your own private practice is a must. I was impressed that a backing I had sent to a student had been sufficiently listened to and worked with, for that student to realise there were repeats not shown in the music which I hadn’t pointed out. It is also great that if I need to send a backing track, or PDF it is more or less there instantly, so no need to nip out to the photocopier!

The online platform means that not only can your student see you throughout the lesson, but they can see themselves. What an excellent resource! I no longer need a mirror to point out the tension, the student can immediately see it and this makes correcting it, in theory, much more of an instant process. I’m finding that the modelling I do, pointing out relaxed jaw, head position and mouth positioning is a particularly successful part of the teaching I’m doing like this, as students are forced to watch you at close quarters.

The interesting thing for me is that although I am used to hearing voices live and analysing them, that I hear things slightly differently through the screen. Obviously the sound quality is never the same through any online platform, yet the way the sound reaches me can magnify the faults I hear. It has made me more picky about precision in vowel shapes and maintaining a homogenous sound throughout the range, this is great for correcting languages. It also shows me where students are unsure of music, don’t get the right interval or where their intonation is likely to go off, which then leads to a technical correction, which may never have been picked up live. These things you can easily miss when you are providing support at the piano and your focus is split, or the support removes the problem enough for the student to get away with it, despite there being an underlying fault which needs addressing.

The other thing that has become clear to me is that online teaching is certainly not an easy option for teachers. I find the actual teaching much more intense, despite not accompanying and the preparation time is a lot more. I’m hoping that as time goes on, if we are forced to continue in this way, it will become a lot easier and less time-consuming…. we’ll see!

I am enormously grateful though for the excellent input of many colleagues, online YouTube tutorials and the students continuing to trust that I can offer them something worth having in these troubled times. I have had more chats with colleagues in the past week or so, than at any other time, so that is a serious up-side.