$3120 a student would spend on average on a vocal coach per year
A recent lessons.com study reports that the average price of a singing class in the US is close to $60. With just one class a week and 52 weeks in a year, we get 52 * 60 = $3120. 😱
Ideally, you want to practice singing 3–4 times a week, if not every day. Even if you take weekly lessons and find someone online for half-price, you would end up paying over $100 per month.
And you are really lucky if you manage to find a good specialist for this price!
The bottom line is: singing teachers are expensive.
What are the options then?
- Find someone from another state with cheaper rates and study online
- Solely focus on self-study with the help of online tools and YouTube videos
- Combine the two: take classes with the teacher less frequently and practice at home with the help of online tools
I personally prefer the 3rd option.
Self-study alone would leave me without quality feedback from my teacher, which is so important to guide the process. Getting someone with really cheap rates might become a compromise and turn into a gambling game. It might work, or it might not – high risk of wasting time and money.
P.S. I’m not talking about building a professional singing career here, otherwise, I would suggest trying to find a government grant or a subsidy.
I also had this problem. I solved it for myself and now offer the solution to you.
You might have heard that Singing Carrots offers Pitch Training as part of our Pro membership.
I started building this tool as a complementary assistant to my singing classes in 2018. My teacher was giving me homework to sing scales at home. I do not play piano and needed some other way to follow the notes.
There were plenty of YouTube videos available, but they would not fit my vocal range, and I could not twist the sequence to go up or down the scale when I reach my highest and lowest notes.
I’ve created a smart virtual piano to assist my practice. It looks like this:
The piano plays vocal exercises within my vocal range, so I can sing along.
Since I focused on staying in tune during the exercises, I called it Pitch Training.
The tool got much smarter since 2018. Now it reads your mic input and instantly shows if you are on-pitch and in tempo. You can tweak the sequences, configure bpm, and record yourself to retrospect and analyze how you sound.
You can even add your own melodies or songs to practice.
I wrote an extensive review showing what it looks like once you unlock the pro.
Take a look at what’s behind the paywall here:
And last but not least!
I wanted the singing practice to be fun and engaging, so people would return to it more and more. After all, it’s all about the time we dedicate to it.
To get read of this “I must work on it every day” downer-feeling I turned the tool into a game.
I hope you will have fun with it and get a decent amount of useful practice as a side-benefit =)
