Hi there! this video is aimed at educators looking to improve or conduct
online voice lessons. Like many of you i've been
teaching online since march and it kind of looks like I might be on and off with
online teaching until at least there is a vaccine. So hopefully this
video can be informative help you give you some tips to improve voice
lessons online, especially in a group setting. This video is focusing on group
singing lessons, which a lot of music educators are having trouble with
right now and i'm going to share my experiences
and other things that I found useful or helpful as you conduct
a group singing lesson. I'm going to begin with
studying with things that you need to consider when you're doing a group
singing lesson online. Number one consider
how many people are going to be in your group class. Now you may not know this
right now, but it's good to go into..a... sort of approximate as you teach or get
people to sign up for your lessons. Do you have a maximum of how many people
that you're going to work with? Is this a choir that you're working with?
Make sure that you really have an understanding before you go into group
lessons on how many people you are catering to.
For example, over the summer I was teaching at a musical theater online
summer camp for children. I was catering to small children
and before we even began I had a rough idea about how many kids I would have.
I was aiming for about five to fifteen, which at least gave me a little bit of
a framework to work with how i'm gonna conduct my lesson. Two consider the age
group that you're dealing with over the summer i was dealing with very
young children grade two to four, which has a very different
list of needs to an adult class or even a teenage class.
Be really clear on who you're catering to and the age limits. maybe you're catering
to anyone who wants to sign up, but really make sure that before you start
your group lessons that you are clear to yourself
for your planning on the ages that you are
catering to. Really think about the length of your class.
Now when I was doing my summer camp I was on zoom for three hours
with my group. However the music class I was conducting was
only roughly 45 minutes. I really thought that I wouldn't be able to engage
children that were that little for that length of time, but I actually
could and it can be done! So really have a
great idea or at least an approximate of how long you're going to conduct the
lesson. If you are aiming for an hour and you're dealing with children
you should probably have some games and other activities backed up in case
the singing lesson goes too quickly or they're just not feeling it. For the day
make sure you have backups to fill in the hour or
the, you know, however long you want to go for so
you aren't just staring at the screen and you're not sure what to do.
If you are going to go over that hour limit, make sure that you're
including a break. It is a long time for people at any age group to just stare at
a screen, even if they're engaged if you're going
over an hour include a five minute break, a stretch, anything like that. The next
thing to think about is how long are you going
to run these voice lessons and these group voice lessons. Are you
just doing a week of intensive workshopping? are you doing
it for an entire term? or semester? or weekly three times a week? whatever!
Make sure you really map that down on a piece of paper or in your calendar
so you can really plan repertoire, exercises
videos, whatever you need to do to get ready, so you have an idea so then you
can set your goals for that period of time.
Moving on to goals, what is your goal that you want to achieve from this
lesson? Is it just for fun? which is great, but
even if people are doing things for fun they want to come out
learning something, with some sort of achievement or some sort of
improvement in their singing. Really plan out what the goal is
in this period of time that you've chosen. You want to think about the
resources that you have available to run your group lessons.
I assume you'd be running through a laptop or a computer
at worst an iPad. You want to make sure that
you think about what instrument you're really going to use
in class to lead your group. Now not everyone plays an instrument, which is
very challenging if you are a music teacher, and you don't have something to
guide you with. Do you have your piano? that is my choice
I have a piano uhhh.. i purchased a Privia
..I want to say 1800... Casio Privia is pretty inexpensive and it's a great
keyboard. Do you use guitar? Do you use... I met a music
teacher recently who guides with ukulele, which seems random and difficult but
really works for her, great. At worst you could probably use an iPad
app with the piano to play the notes. So
really consider how you're going to guide your group lesson. Also make sure
that you've considered backing tracks for your group lesson.
How are you going to go do that? For my summer camp that I was doing I was using
edited songs, because the kids were so little.
I decided that the full song might be too much, so instead of doing one
long song we did two songs that were at least a minute.
I got the music recorded by a accompanist
paid that person to make piano introduction,
outro and little snippets, so it sounded very official for them.
or you could use a backing track off the internet. Make sure that you're
purchasing that if you are using that as well,
or guiding students to use a backing track online.
You will have to think about what platform you're going to use.
Now I teach young students and they tend to like google meet
because at the school i'm at they all use google meet, but zoom
for music lessons is much easier to use. You do have to get used to the settings,
there's certain settings that you need to
select in order to make sure that the voice doesn't cut out or the instrument
doesn't count out As you're singing or performing. You would have to
look into that. I highly suggest zoom because of its
features but some children, if you're dealing with kids,
struggle with zoom. They'd have to have an adult help them
with that but google meet works Facetime's really good
there's lots of different options, at worst Skype, which i've never used but
know that's around. There's lots of different options out there for what
platform you want to use. You also want to consider how you're
going to get paid now i'm assuming that you are not doing these music lessons
for free, unless you are doing it to raise funds
for an organization. I have seen people online on Instagram
doing that, but at the end of the day, even if you're
getting a donation, you need to think about how you will receive that donation
or pay. I live in America so we use Venmo and we
also have the option of Paypal. Make sure that you know in your region
how you're digitally going to be receiving money.
You will not be getting an envelope in the mail full of cash,
so really think ahead think about how you're going to invoice people
for the group lesson, so that when they sign up for the lesson
that's already in place. They are all the things that you need to think about when
conducting a music singing group class. I will share
now my experiences teaching online with a summer camp, which was... I did two
weeks, but each week was a separate program,
allowing children to sign up or for both weeks
or for one week. When I was thinking about how to do that
at first I felt very very nervous. I was worried that we wouldn't be able to sing
together at all, but I did definitely get around
that. I was very fortunate that I didn't have to do any of the admin for my group
that was already pre-organized, but if you are doing the admin
make sure everyone is very clear what link they're using
to enter the program. You want to make sure they have their resources before
they come to class and I say that because especially if
you're dealing with children it's already quite confusing for them
the process of being online. If you are giving them sheet music which
I highly suggest, just so they get that really nice rounded....
..or lyric sheet... so they get a piece of paper to hold.
You want to make sure they have that in advance. Do remember though that some
children do not have access to a printer and actually I'm person that doesn't have
a printer at home. So if you are giving them a a piece of
paper or a lyric sheet or a sheet of music
how are they going to look at that during lesson? Are they going to have a
split screen? do they have an iPad? Do they have a phone?
Really, maybe, write instructions for those students so they have
access to those documents just like the other children
or adults in the singing group. I did teach
grade two to four. They were very young younger than I normally teach I usually
teach around the middle school age, so I was very nervous about doing online
but the kids were absolutely fantastic. When the children
entered the classroom, I would all greet them i would smile
I would make sure that they felt welcome, I would ask them about their day.
I was seeing them every day so I would ask a question about
maybe something they told me about yesterday or a pet,
and then once everyone was part of the lesson I would
start a physical stretch. Before we did the physical stretch I made sure that
they all were online, they could hear me and
that I could see them! It's very important when you're dealing
with children that you can see them and see they're participating.
They could be saying they're there with you, have their screen off and their
parents might not know where they are, so you got to make sure that you can see
them. Some children's cameras weren't working
and if that was the case for the whole class I would check in with their
parents at the end of the the day. We did a physical stretch we
would stretch our bodies, stretch our necks stretch, our arms legs, whatever
make it a little bit of a game and we would do that for five minutes. Aome of
them hadn't done a stretch or anything physical, because they have been at home
and this is an online class. So I would start with that. We would do warm-ups and
vocal function. Now I thought this would be really
tricky, but it worked really well. Everyone was on
mute and we would start doing humming warming up,
lip trills, all the normal stuff that you would do in a singing class
and then I would do tongue twisters. I found tongue twisters were a really
great way of getting them to unmute themselves and practicing. Oh!
you're gonna do it next! then you! and then you! and then you! and
then they would unmute, do the activity and mute again.
We got really fast at that, which at first took practice
but they got really good at unmuting themselves really quickly to participate
and share what they were singing. Sirens work really well, tongue twisters
lip trills, anything like that to get make sure that they would understand
the concept of what you're singing. I would warm up their head voice, I would
warm up their chest voice and then I would try and link it up in the middle
there. Repertoire was less tricky than I
thought it would be. I started with, with the age group I had
we had two songs, two edited songs. We didn't do the full
song in the first week we did an Aladdin week and we did Arabian Nights and
A Whole New World with edited scores. They received an edited score, a backing
track and I recorded myself singing over the backing track.
That is really important, they need to hear your voice.
Okay, so make sure that you even if you're not the best singer in the world
you are doing the recording of the voice on the track they're hearing at home.
I'm really big stickler about that, it shouldn't be the Disney person or,
you know, the Broadway singer, or jazz singer, you should use your voice even if
your voice isn't 100 perfect. They get used to your voice and
associate that track then with you as the teacher. The first week went really
well, so this is how we would do repertoire.
We would start by me singing it with the piano or the backing track, if you don't
play piano, and then they would be on mute and sing
along. There is a delay on zoom so that worked quite well.
Then I would ask each kid to sing eight bars.
I didn't get them to sing the whole track, because that would take forever,
even with the edited score, but I did eight bars.
When I was playing piano it worked really well to play the skeleton chord.
So i'd play one chord as they sang and just put them,
played them, very gently underneath not too loud not too soft. I found that the
delay was fine, which was surprising and it was
almost like an accompaniment. Especially with young children, or anyone
really with pitch issues, hearing those skeleton chords underneath
really helped guide them and during the evening they would
practice the song with the backing track, so when they came to me the next day we
would practice with the skeleton called under, and it worked
very well I was very surprised, of course with
any of this online stuff they can only sing one at a time.
There were a number of children who felt very nervous about singing by themselves
in front of the group and I would just sing with them very softly
but give them the illusion that they were singing not just with me but it
went really well, so i'd be like all right
let's sing here we go [SOFTLY SINGING] and I literally sang at that volume
It gave them their belief that they weren't singing alone, so they had a
little bit more confidence. I found by the end of the two weeks some kids who
were very nervous at first, were fine singing by themselves.
So we did warm-ups, we did repertoire usually one song.
Dor the first three days we did Arabian Nights second two day,
it was a week so then Thursday-Friday, we did A Whole New World the week after.
We did In Summer from Frozen and that actually took up the whole week because
we did the whole song. I didn't want to do too much with them
I did have For The First Time In Forever but it was just,
they weren't there, so we just did one week on the same song and by the end of
the week they were able to sing it by themselves. My
goal for the week was to create a video or get the kids to send in a recording
of them singing the song, it was so adorable.
They were so cute and what I asked them to do was
they had the piano backing with my voice they put
earphones in which linked to their iPhone
which, or android or whatever, that was playing the song then
a parent was filming them as they listened to the track, so they recorded
only their voice. Okay, then they sent me the track or the
video, it actually worked really well with a video.
They sent me the video of just them singing, because they were listening to
the accompaniment playing and then I took those videos put the
piano accompaniment underneath, which I already had
and then spliced it together, so we had this really cute video
with all their voices and I could, you now, take cuts so it was
little parts of them singing solo and then putting it together where they were
singing together. It was just in unison because they were
little I have done this with choirs where they sing, and you'll see
online heaps of videos where people do amazing
group singing, they are much more tricky to put
together and if you're not proficient in those
definitely pay someone. There's so many people looking for work in the music
industry right now!
You could definitely go and find that
and that was my experience it was really successful I was really happy
with it two great weeks of teaching music
and getting kids engaged in music and singing,
building their confidence, even in an online setting, which I was really
surprised at. It was so nice to just sing, YES we
didn't sing as a big group, sometimes just for fun I would just say 'unmute
each other' and we'd all sing and it would be a hot mess and it was really fun and made
them laugh. But you can still come out with a really
successful online program, even if you're doing singing lessons
once a week with a group of two to twenty. Remember that
the more kids or adults that you have in the group
the less solo time they're gonna have to share their vocals, but that's okay
if that's what you're doing, that's gonna work really well. Anyway, I hope those
tips give you things to think about and some experience tips that i've had
teaching group lessons online. Good luck with your group online singing
classes guys and let me know in the comments if you
have any other tips you could share with our group thank you so much guys. Bye-bye [HAPPY SINGING]
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