DO I NEED A CONSULTATION BEFORE MY FIRST LESSON?
We offer a free 20 minute consultation to all new students because we believe singing, and especially the training and study process, is a crucial and intimate experience. As such, we want you to be comfortable with your teacher and their teaching method. In the consultation, we will spend some time chatting with you about your singing journey, your goals and expectations; as well as explaining a little bit more about our teaching method. We will go through a simple breathing exercise, a short vocal warm up and, finally, we ask all new students to bring a few bars of a song to sing at the end of the consultation.
Don’t worry about this part! We don’t audition students and we firmly believe everyone can learn how to sing. This part of the consultation exists solely for us to assess your vocal type and what specific requirements you have as a singer. We will give you feedback based on what we hear and suggest the best approach for you specifically. Please feel free to bring any song for this section, just make sure it’s something you’re familiar and comfortable with. It only needs to be a super short section of a song, no musical accompaniment needed.
We strongly recommend making use of the consultation before you book a lesson with us. In it, we can clarify any doubts you may have and spend some time actually getting to know one another before we embark on our singing journey together. Singing can be a very emotional process. So we want to respect your times and make sure you always feel comfortable with your teacher. Please use this taster lesson to clarify all your doubts. There are no silly questions!
WHAT IS MY FIRST LESSON LIKE?
Once we’ve gotten to know one another and we know what direction we’re headed towards with your singing training, we will begin our actual work. Our lessons are structures in 3 parts:
Breathing Technique
We will always spend the first few minutes of each lesson getting in touch with our breath. Our singing technique is rooted in breath support from a muscle called the diaphragm. We will work on this breathing technique in different ways depending on the student, how they can incorporate the technique and/or what singing background they may have.
Vocal Exercises
Vocal exercises, otherwise referred to as vocal warm up, are the core of our lessons. Here is where we work to fix vocal issues and further improving our strengths. Your vocal exercises will be tailored to you by your teacher, at their discretion. If you have a specific vocal concern or area of your voice you would like to work on, please mention it and we will try to incorporate this to your exercises. During our exercises, we will work on things like pitch accuracy, range, vocal control, breath, connecting your chest and head voice, projecting, resonators, and much much more!
Repertoire
Once we’ve worked on warming up the voice and getting to know our technique, we can start implementing it into an actual song. This is super important (and usually the students’ favorite part of the lesson) because we get to practice what we worked on in the Warm Up section, trying to maintain that same technique. At The Vocal Hub we fully support students developing their performative skills, but we do strive to put technique first. Once you start incorporating the technique, over the course of our lessons, it will slowly start to become second nature. As it does, it will be easier to apply emotion and style to your Repertoire (songs).
We ask students to bring their own song choices for the Repertoire section, depending on the style of music they would like to focus on. If you require it, however, you can ask your teacher to recommend a few songs for you to try that they think will be helpful in your training.
DO I NEED TO PRACTICE?
Absolutely 100% yes. Practicing in between lessons with the exercises your teacher gives you is absolutely essential if you want to see results. Although having lessons once a week is probably the best pace for most students, that doesn’t mean we don’t need to practice our skills when we’re not in class. Like with anything else you wish to learn, the more you practice the better you’ll become.
We always encourage our students to record our lessons so you can have an audio file to help you warm up during the week, aside from the individual exercises your teacher will give you. We recommend dedicating at least 10 minutes every day to practicing. Or around 3 times a week if you want a slightly slower pace. We do however recommend not overdoing it with your exercises, as you could stain your voice with misuse and overuse. Without your teacher there to guide you in proper usage, it’s best to keep it simple and precise.
DO I NEED TO BRING MY OWN SHEET MUSIC?
You can, but it’s not necessary. Please do check with your teacher, especially if it’s a particularly complex piece. Sheet music can help us with certain songs, especially in an audition scenario.
DO I NEED TO BRING A BACKING TRACK?
If you can, that would be incredible! Singing acapella, though beautiful, can be extremely difficult. We often tend to get deviated from the original key and we lose that musical timing and rhythm we want to work on as well. Most songs have an instrumental version posted on YouTube. We suggest looking for an instrumental prior to your lesson so you know you’re familiar with it. Since we are doing lessons online and playing back audio can be a bit of a tech-nightmare, we recommend playing the instrumental track on a different device than the one you’re on the lesson with. This isn’t essential for the lesson to take place though, just a recommendation.
DO I NEED TO BE ABLE TO READ MUSIC?
No. The scales we do on our exercises are simple and can be learnt by ear. If you do know how to read music, that is always a plus for any musician.
CAN I RECORD MY LESSON?
Of course! As we mentioned before, recording your lesson (especially the exercises) is crucial for you to be able to really improve and see results. You can record them on your phone (most smartphones have a built-in voice memo app) or on a portable recorder. The quality on smartphone microphones is usually good enough.
CAN I REALLY LEARN TO SING ONLINE?
The biggest takeaway for us as singing training professionals is that learning to sing through an impersonal internet tutorial or DVD is probably not the best way to go. You really want a lesson to be tailored to you, a teacher that is listening to your personal vocal issues and encouraging you to learn and grow. Thankfully, this can all be achieved through online lessons.
Technology today fully allows us to listen to your voice with great quality and assess how to help you fix vocal issues. As an added bonus, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, if you travel or have moved to a different area/country. You can keep your vocal coach wherever you go! Plus, no commute time and a much more flexible scheduling process.
With online lessons, you can also record the actual video from the lesson as well as the audio. So you won’t miss a thing!
As for system requirements, you must have high-speed broadband and, preferably, a webcam (though not essential).
DO YOU OFFER IN PERSON LESSONS AS WELL?
Yes! As of May 17th 2021 we will resume our in-person lessons at a Studio in Camden, North London. All lessons purchased in the Lesson Bundles are valid for both online and in-person lessons. Please check with your teacher for more info on how to book in-person lessons.
WHAT TECHNIQUES DO YOU TEACH?
Teachers at The Vocal Hub are trained in the Speech Level Singing Technique (SLS), one of the most highly-acclaimed techniques in the world used by countless Grammy winning artists. Such as Madonna, Michael Jackson, Chester Bennington, Barbra Streisand, Prince, Liza Minelli and many others.
DO YOU OFFER DISCOUNTS?
Yes! We offer discounts on our bundle lesson packages when you book 5 or 10 lessons at once. Please find more about our Bundle Packages here!
DO YOU OFFER GROUP LESSONS?
Not at the moment. But please contact us if this is something you’d be interested in at team@www.thevocalhub.co.uk
