For those of you who have had a coach, when did you hire them and in what way did they help your child? Like we don’t live near these coaches that are in larger cities to meet in person, so I know you just Skype w/ them but how does that work? Do they literally just talk to your student about their suggestions etc? Confused …
We hired MTCA in the spring of her Junior year. She Skyped with her monologue coach and song performance coach. She worked on her songs technically with her voice teacher locally. The monologue coach was in southern CA and we are in northern CA (but same time zone) and the song performance coach was in NY. They actively worked both the monologue and the songs. It worked well. I think in person is definitely preferred, but Skyping did work.
We started with Mary Anna Dennard in Spring of D’s junior year. The first session was to get to know D. After that she started working on monologue choices and school lists. She also connected us with an amazing vocal coach in NYC. We met with him over Skype also. One he met D and understood her personality and voice, he and D tried a number of different songs until they settled in a few they really liked. He then recorded all the accompaniment cuts for D in addition to,sending her sheet music marked with the correct cuts.
We did not live close to either so most of our interaction with both was via Skype. However, D did attend a master class Moo organized in NYC to help prepare for auditions, so while in nyc, she had an in person lesson with the vocal coach. She also visited a friend in Texas summer before senior year and was able to have some in person coaching with Moo then. Of course D also was counseled by Moo during Moonifieds and Unifieds and was in communication before and after all her other auditions as well via phone or text. And really was available any time we had a question. One of the other great support systems was Moo Crew, a group of all the students working with Mary Anna that year. They were each other’s advisors, cheerleaders, commiserations, celebrators, etc…throughout the entire year. They had. Facebook group where they shared experiences. And Moo could keep them updated on any and everything Plus D knew someone almost everywhere she went. So that was nice too.
We did not have any issues working via Skype.