Using online platforms to create community in the voice studio: lessons from the pandemic

Remote teaching has come a long way since the first panicked days back in March 2020. At the beginning of the pandemic many of us were scrambling to figure out how to move voice lessons to a fully remote format. We found ourselves in Zoom classrooms staring at frightened, displaced students. Eventually we learned how to share files and links in the chat, how to draw using the Whiteboard function, and how to say “You’re on mute” approximately 35 times a day without going insane. By the summer we were all settling into the dreaded new normal: our FaceBook feeds were full of posts about SoundJack, Cleanfeed, open-back headphones, and external microphones. The effectiveness of remote voice lessons and the range of available technologies for studio teaching have been discussed elsewhere. This article will not endeavor to offer technical instruction but rather to suggest ways we might use technology to create community for our students, with a particular focus on the voice studio class.