Face to face singing lessons can be expensive, and even many online platforms are outside of the reach of many beginners.
Enter Singorama.
A low-cost solution to online singing courses, Singorama offers 28 audio lessons and a bunch of extras to help you along your way. Steering away from the industry norm of video-based lessons, Singorama delivers their videos via mp3 files, the justification being that singing is about listening, not watching.
Logical, but in reality, I found it more challenging to learn from than with other platforms where you can actually see your instructor.
Singorama Singing Lessons Overview
Contents
- What’s Included?
- The Courses
- Getting Started as a Singer
- Vocal Technique & The Technical Stuff
- Singing Styles & Learn Entire Songs
- Your Future As A Singer
- Bonus Vocal Exercises
- User Interface
- Songs & Styles
- Tools & Support
- Value For Money/Cost
- Trial Period
- Niche Aspects
- How Does It Compare?
- Conclusion – Who Is Singorama For?
What’s Included?
As with all good online learning platforms, Singorama includes a handful of extras over and above its vocal lessons. With Singorama, you get:
- 28 interactive audio lessons
- 20 additional vocal exercises
- 3 original songs to learn
And if 50+ audio tracks weren’t enough, you also get access to four eBooks, a recording studio app, a pitch training app, and Jayde Musica, a music theory game for learning how to read musical notation.
Pretty decent, I thought.
The Courses
Rather than simply dividing its courses into Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced, Singorama opts for a function-based naming system, spreading it’s 28 audio lessons across 6 modules:
- Getting Started as a Singer – 3 lessons
- Vocal Technique – 5 lessons
- The Technical Stuff – 3 lessons
- Singing Style – 3 lessons
- Learn Entire Songs – 5 lessons
- Your Future as a Singer – 9 lessons
This makes it easy for you to go back and review lessons at any point. Need to return to the section on tone and tighten up those vowels? You know where to find it…
Singorama recommends focusing on no more than one lesson per day. This means ideally leaving a couple of days in between lessons to allow yourself time to practice and rehearse the techniques you’ve learned.
In face-to-face lessons I’ve done in the past, I’d usually have a week in-between visits. Depending on the amount of time you have available for practice, you might wish to apply a similar approach. The lessons are all around 20 minutes each, and I found that with a few pauses and practices, they’d take closer to 30-45 minutes, the perfect length for a weekly lesson.
Getting Started as a Singer
Singorama starts right where you should, at the beginning. The first three lessons focus on warmups, breathing, posture, and understanding how your voice works.
If you have previous singing experience or are a musician already, you might be able to get through this section in a few days, or even in one sitting. Just don’t skip them. They’re vital to setting yourself up for success.
Vocal Technique & The Technical Stuff
These two sections are the real nitty-gritty of the course. You’ll learn about vocal techniques such as controlling your tone and tune, and switching between your chest and head voice, before moving into musical concepts such as key, time signature, and intervals.
I found this to be pretty well done on Singorama’s behalf. Some tutors (and programs) focus only on instrument-specific techniques, neglecting the idea that musicians (singers included) will eventually want to perform with other musicians.
The concepts are well described and require no prior musical knowledge, which is perfect if vocals are your first instrument!
Singing Styles & Learn Entire Songs
After three unique lessons about styles and genres of music, you’re finally onto learning a full song!
If you’re taking lessons week by week, you might find this a bit too far down the track. I personally felt like it took a little too long to get to singing an actual song. That said, I could have easily packed some of the earlier lessons into a single session.
Luckily, you have access to the entire suite at once, so you can work at your own pace.
Your Future As A Singer
This section is a real ode to Singorama’s dedication to creating musicians, not just singers. Once you’ve got through the three included original songs, you have nine lessons ahead of you which cover topics such as performance anxiety, auditions, and even writing your very own song.
Bonus Vocal Exercises
I found these exercises incredibly valuable, as they gave me something to practice in between lessons, especially while I was building up to learning full songs.
Singorama includes exercises for:
- Warmups
- Vocal strengthening
- Extending your range
- Interval training
User Interface
To be brutally honest, I found Singorama’s user interface to be pretty bland. Other than a short welcome video, there are no flashy animations or videos to help guide you through the course. It’s literally just black and red text and a bunch of MP3 downloads.
That said, this layout works in favor of being extraordinarily straightforward and easy to navigate. And after all, you’re learning to sing – which is about sound, not sight – so what’s there to complain about?
Songs & Styles
Singorama teaches you three completely original songs. I’m sure this helps them get around a few licensing issues. Still, it does inevitably mean there’s not a single person using the program that will be familiar with those songs.
The songs are in three different styles, a ballad, a rock song, and a pop track.
This gives you a taste of singing in different genres and compliments the lessons on style and genre quite nicely. The production level is adequate, though I thought some of the mixes sounded a little off (the ballad appears to have the kick and snare drums panned to opposite ears…).
Tools & Support
Like I said at the start, Singorama comes with a bunch more than just a few singing lessons.
Firstly, you get the Singorama Mini Recording Studio, which appears to be a very basic digital audio workstation for recording your vocals if and when you get to that point. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to test this in full as it’s incompatible with Apple’s Catalina. The same goes for Perfect Your Pitch Trainer Pro.
Regardless, these are seriously cool tools to have in your arsenal and worth the cost of the program in themselves.
You also get access to Jayde Musica, which will teach you how to read musical notation. This will help tremendously down the track when you learn more and more songs. There’s an eBook teaching the same thing called How to Read Music – The Ultimate Guide, so you can choose which format works best for you.
On the note of eBooks, you also get the Singorama Workbook that accompanies the current version of the program, as well as the two old workbooks from the initial version of the program. Not sure why exactly, but if it’s free, it’s free!
Not enough? The program comes with a metronome and scheduling tool, and Singorama also posts on their blog fairly frequently, which gives you access to even more tips and tricks!
Value For Money/Cost
With so much included, it’s hard to believe that the Singorama program costs only $67.
According to the website, the entire package is worth $290. However, there doesn’t really appear to be anywhere else you can buy the other products separately. Regardless, this is incredible value.
In fact, they’re so confident that you’ll get such incredible value out of the program that Singorama offers a 60-day money-back guarantee. What’s there to lose?
Trial Period
Singorama doesn’t offer any kind of free trial, but they do have a no questions asked money-back guarantee. Still not convinced? Download Singorama’s Free Mini Singing Course for a taste of what they’re about, and make your own mind up.
Niche Aspects
Singorama appears to focus on the holistic process of singing, including lessons on performance anxiety, auditions, and singing with a band.
In line with this view, one of the included vocal exercises is a guided meditation designed to melt your anxiety away and prepare you for your lesson, practice, or performance. I thought this was pretty cool and definitely something not all vocal coaches give you.
They’ve also got a couple of additional courses that you can move onto once you’ve completed this program. Superior Songwriting teaches you how to write songs (superior ones presumably), whereas the Platinum Inner Circle programs gives you 8 new interactive vocal lessons every month.
How Does It Compare?
Compared to other platforms such as 30 Day Singer, Singorama is considerably less developed. 28 lessons is pretty light.
Don’t get me wrong, for $67 I can’t complain. But I’d really consider Singorama more of a crash course or entryway to the world of singing, as opposed to a one-stop-shop online lesson platform.
Conclusion – Who Is Singorama For?
In summary, I’d say Singorama offers decent value for money. I certainly wouldn’t shell out the $290 they suggest the package is worth, as you can access far more comprehensive programs for that price.
But, as a gateway drug, Singorama does an excellent job of introducing beginners to the music world. If you’re not quite sure if singing lessons are for you and you’re keen to dip a toe in to starting, then Singorama is the platform for you!
