Lawlor Voice Studio
As the percentage of our communities who are vaccinated continues to rise, I am pleased to be able to offer in-person lesson options again. Remote voice lessons remain in place for anyone who prefers them. Random Tuesday traffic jam going to make you 20 minutes late? Just stay home and have your full lesson!
Remote Voice Lessons
via FaceTime (or Zoom as a fallback)
I have to say, I've been so surprised at how smoothly most remote voice lessons have been going. They take just a little getting used to, but I have voice-teaching colleagues who have offered online sessions for years, and I'll quote one here:
"I have seen literally no difference in the rate of progress of my online students compared to my in-person students."
I'm so grateful that we have this option as a viable one that can still deliver quality progress.
Procedure
The student should be in a space easily accessible by all family members. Parents must also be aware of scheduling and timing of the remote lesson. I will send a group text message to the student and parent/primary contact when I am ready at the lesson time. At that point, whichever device the student will use to attend the lesson should be used to contact me. This way parents will always be aware that the lesson is ready to begin and can monitor whenever desired.
Technology
Apple users should probably just use FaceTime, calling me at [email protected] when I've messaged that the lesson is ready to begin. When I tested, the FaceTime connection was just as quick as Zoom and the sound quality was noticeably better. Android users or those on a laptop can choose Zoom if they'd like though. Using Zoom means I send an email with a link to the lesson.
Here are the tech requirements:
- The student will need a quality WiFi connection. Any speed less than 60 mbps might make the connection difficult to maintain. (You can check your WiFi speed here.)
- Also required: two charged devices such as smartphones, tablets, or laptops. Because of a slight time delay, it is impossible for me to play piano live with their songs. So the first device will be used to connect to the lesson, while the second will be used to play the accompaniment to the song.
- Recommended: headphones to connect to the device the student is using to have the lesson. This improves the sound quality and the ability to hear the instruction I'm giving.
- Icing on the cake: if the second device playing the piano part to songs was connected to some kind of speaker or sound system, that would be very fancy and helpful. I've even heard of some crazy stuff like putting your smart phone speaker into an empty coffee mug or something like that? Alternatively, the student who ran the test used a second set of headphones, so he controlled the accompaniment volume that way.
Students will receive an individually-tailored Google Drive folder from me with recordings of their pieces and PDFs of the sheet music. We'll do technical exercises and sing repertoire just like a live session, but the student will be responsible for running the piano part of the songs (by playing and pausing the recording on the second device). I think there's a bit of setup and "getting used to it" at the beginning of this process, but once we've mastered it, things have been very simple.
It's probably easiest if the student can print out the sheet music PDFs and use physical paper copies on their end.
Here are the tech requirements:
- The student will need a quality WiFi connection. Any speed less than 60 mbps might make the connection difficult to maintain. (You can check your WiFi speed here.)
- Also required: two charged devices such as smartphones, tablets, or laptops. Because of a slight time delay, it is impossible for me to play piano live with their songs. So the first device will be used to connect to the lesson, while the second will be used to play the accompaniment to the song.
- Recommended: headphones to connect to the device the student is using to have the lesson. This improves the sound quality and the ability to hear the instruction I'm giving.
- Icing on the cake: if the second device playing the piano part to songs was connected to some kind of speaker or sound system, that would be very fancy and helpful. I've even heard of some crazy stuff like putting your smart phone speaker into an empty coffee mug or something like that? Alternatively, the student who ran the test used a second set of headphones, so he controlled the accompaniment volume that way.
Students will receive an individually-tailored Google Drive folder from me with recordings of their pieces and PDFs of the sheet music. We'll do technical exercises and sing repertoire just like a live session, but the student will be responsible for running the piano part of the songs (by playing and pausing the recording on the second device). I think there's a bit of setup and "getting used to it" at the beginning of this process, but once we've mastered it, things have been very simple.
It's probably easiest if the student can print out the sheet music PDFs and use physical paper copies on their end.
Any other questions or concerns?
Let me know, and I'll incorporate anything I haven't thought of into the guidelines.