Online Voice Lessons from the Comfort of Your Own Home

My oldest daughter loves to sing. She has sang since she was a baby and could hum a tune. She sings while doing chores, she sings while doing school, she even sings in the shower. When we found out that she wanted to audition at our local community theater we knew she needed to start some type of voice lessons.

Read on to discover the convenience and affordability of participating in online voice lessons from the comfort of your own home.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a free product in return for my honest review. I was financially compensated for this post. All thoughts and opinions expressed herein are my own and not influenced by the developing company and/or its affiliates in any way.

We enrolled our daughter in voice lessons for about 18 months. She drastically improved and was able to land some good roles in a few shows at the local theater. Then she realized she wanted to learn an instrument, so we began guitar lessons while her other sisters continued with their ballet lessons. Her voice lessons had to go in exchange for instrument lessons.

If you have multiple children in the arts, you know how expensive music and dance lessons can be. Being a homeschooler, we don’t have access to affordable or free music lessons at a school. We always have to pay out of pocket for private lessons.

It can also be a headache to be the chauffer for everyone’s lessons, practices and rehearsals!

Thanks to technology, there are now a lot of options available online that are affordable and convenient. I have always been intrigued by the different music lessons that can you take online from home, but never knew how they worked. I was also not aware of a program that taught voice lessons from home.

Let me tell you how excited my daughter and I were to have the opportunity to try out the The Inside Voice Standard Membership.

The Inside Voice is the word’s most accessible music studio where you can learn to sing what you want to sing from the comfort of your own home! They will teach you the styles of music you’re most interested in learning how to sing.

This program came from 12 years of running Molly’s Music in Southern California. Molly and her husband wanted to make voice lessons accessible and affordable for everyone so The Inside Voice, TIV, was born.

My daughter wanted to share her review of the program. Since she has experience with voice lessons and music experience, she was better qualified to write about it.

The Inside Voice Review from Abigail, 16 years old:

The Inside Voice is an online vocal school where you can take voice lessons from home. There are three different memberships to choose from and each one offers different things.

I am currently using the Standard Membership which includes:

1. One live voice lesson a month via Zoom
2. Weekly pocket lessons (three a month)
3. Pre-recorded instructional videos
4. Vocal exercises or warm ups
5. Performance opportunities

The first thing we did was to coordinate a time to meet with my teacher. My mom set this up through email first and was told to have me pick a song that I wanted to work on. If I didn’t have a backing track, they could provide one for me.

Since I have experience with auditions for community theater, I already knew how to find a backing track. Don’t worry, if you don’t know what a backing track is; they will explain it to you and show you how to find one, or provide one for you. 

When you begin the program you will have a live introduction meet and greet with your teacher. This is a 15 minute Zoom meeting.

You get to chat with the teacher, answer some questions, and share a little bit about yourself and what you would like to sing. Your parent can then talk directly with the teacher and ask any questions they may have as well.

At the end of the meeting, they will play the piano and give you some short vocal warm ups. Then you get to sing the song you would like to work on which she will record for your first pocket lesson.

I was wondering how this would work with Zoom because it can sometimes lag, however, the teacher understands the lag and came up with a great solution. She will play the piano and sing the exercise for you as an example. Then she gives you the starting key and you sing it acapella.

I pulled the song up on my phone and sat it right next to the computer speaker. I was able to sing with it next to me and it worked fine. After your first meeting, you will wait a few days to receive your first pocket lesson.

This is a really cool feature! It is a recorded video of your teacher watching a recording of you singing the song you are working on. She will go through the video and pause it to give notes and feedback. With the standard membership you get a weekly pocket lesson.

Live Lesson and Pocket Lessons:

Each month you will participate in a live Zoom lesson. This is usually done at the beginning of the month. During the lesson you will warm up by doing various vocal exercises while the teacher accompanies you on the keyboard.

There are times where the internet can lag a bit, but the instructor will wait and start over if you need to. We haven’t had many issues with lagging though.

Once you finish warming up, you sing the song you are working on while your teacher listens. After you sing your song, your instructor gives notes and you go through the song again, pausing to make improvements. They help you and direct you through the song. This is exactly like I did it when I took in-person voice lessons.

Each week after your live lesson, you record yourself singing your song for your pocket lesson and upload it to Dropbox. Your instructor uploads her side of the pocket lesson to the student portal using Vimeo. The student portal is where you will view your pocket lessons. 

Extras included with your membership:

Available in your dashboard is a ton of educational content such as vocal exercises, instructional videos, and a huge content library for all-things music.

Every week there are new pre-recorded instructional videos and vocal warmups to help you sing different music genres and more. An example of this would be How to Sing Classically or How to Sing Pop.

Each week you would watch a part and then do the vocal exercises on your own. You don’t have to do these videos and exercises, as they don’t have to do with what you talked about in your live lesson. They are just really fun extras that will help you stay sharp with your singing skills and help you learn more.

I like that the Instructional Video Library breaks down the lessons for female high and male low vocal ranges. There is so much content to choose from and you can spend hours going through the videos and practicing. There are some really helpful tips that I wasn’t aware of, and hadn’t learned before in previous voice lessons.

Over all, this is a very cool and affordable way to learn how to sing better. I would recommend this to people who are looking for affordable voice lessons from home.

Levels to choose from:

• FREE – includes a weekly instructional video, featured vocal exercise, and exclusive content.
• Basic Membership – 2 pocket lessons, instructional videos, vocal exercises, performance opportunities. $29.95 a month. New Member Trial $9.95.
• Standard Membership – 1 live stream lesson, weekly pocket lessons, instructional videos, vocal exercises, personalized backing tracks, performance opportunities. $69.95 a month. New Member Trial $19.95.

My Final Thoughts:

Technology can be tricky. We had some kinks that we needed to work out in the beginning. If you aren’t familiar with Zoom, it has a slight learning curve to make sure the video camera and sound is turned on. You also need to be able to check your email and click the link to join the video at the correct time.

With the studio being in California, and us living in Florida, there was quite the time difference. When we originally set up what worked for us, it was on PST not EST, so when we went to do the first introduction no one was there!

We both forgot to double check that the time we were saying was the correct time for us. When Zoom sends out the email with the time reminder it is always their time, which is Pacific. So just make sure that you are double checking and know to show up for your time zone! 

My daughter also had a problem with the Dropbox app at first. It took awhile for her video of her song to load, and if she didn’t keep her phone open, it wasn’t going all the way through. Her instructor reached out to me to let us know she hadn’t received the video she needed to create her pocket lesson. We then realized it never went through, even though we thought it had.

Other than minor technology troubles, and figuring out a schedule, my daughter enjoys it. We are finally on a routine of when she has her lesson and when she needs to submit the video of herself singing each week.

My daughter has really enjoyed the program. She loves singing, and enjoys the personalized instruction that she can do at home. She has enjoyed all the vocal practices, and videos that are available on her student portal. There are more added each week which makes it a lot of fun.

She is using this as an elective credit for highschool and makes sure to practice her singing each day. The vocal warm ups, instructional videos and exercises are a huge help.

I think The Inside Voice is a great option for a child that wants to learn how to sing, and for a mom that doesn’t have the time to add one more outside thing to her plate.

Check out their How it Works Page which is full of information and frequently asked question on exactly how the program works. They also have a Facebook Page where they share free videos and vocal instructions.