In-Person or Virtual? – Assessing the Impact of COVID-19 on the Teaching Habits of Voice Pedagogues

The social distancing measures implemented world-wide in the wake of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis have forced voice pedagogues to alter their teaching habits, likely shifting from customary in-person teaching to virtual teaching. An online survey, distributed world-wide in April/May 2020, investigated how singing voice pedagogues were impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. The collected responses from 387 survey participants suggest that, overall, voice teachers were only moderately satisfied with having to teach virtually, indicating that virtual voice teaching is not a sufficient replacement for in-person teaching. The participants indicated that during virtual teaching the singing voice can be assessed relatively well through features which provide both acoustic and visual clues. In contrast, depending on utilized technology, it may be harder to judge those aspects of the singing voice that are solely defined acoustically, such as dynamic range and spectral composition. This may be explained by limitations imposed by “out of the box” technology for online communication, which is typically optimized for speech instead of singing. This calls for better information on technological solutions for virtual voice teaching.