Author: Matt Edwards

Matt Edwards is one of the leading voice teachers for commercial and musical theatre styles in the United States. He is currently associate professor of voice and director of musical theatre at Shenandoah Conservatory of Shenandoah University; artistic director of the Contemporary Commercial Music Vocal Pedagogy Institute; secretary of the Musical Theatre Educator’s Alliance and past secretary of the Pan-American Vocology Association. Edwards’ vocal interests encompass many styles. He has performed numerous roles in plays, musicals and operas with companies including Tri-Cities Opera, Ash Lawn Opera Festival, New Jersey Opera, Atlantic Coast Opera Festival, Bay View Music Festival, the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra, Dayton Philharmonic Pops, Hudson Valley Symphony, the Miami Valley Symphony, Cincinnati Opera Outreach, Lyric Opera Cleveland Outreach, Theatre Lab, KNOW Theatre, and many others. He has also received awards from the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Dayton Opera Guild Competition, The National Association of Teachers of Singing, Southern-Tier Opportunity Coalition, the Voice Foundation and the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges. Former and current students have performed on “American Idol,” Broadway, off-Broadway, national and international tours, national television, cruise ships, theme parks, bands touring throughout the world, and as members of the Ten Tenors, the Singing Sergeants, The Broadway Tenors, and the USO Show Troupe. He has written articles for the Journal of Singing, Journal of Voice, VoicePrints, American Music Teacher, The Voice, Southern Theatre, Vocology in Practice, and has been a vocal coach in residence for Voice Council magazine. He has contributed to books including “A Dictionary for the Modern Singer” by Dr. Matthew Hoch, “Vocal Athlete” by Dr. Wendy LeBorgne and Marci Rosenberg, The “Manual of Singing Voice Rehabilitation” by Leda Scearce,“Training Contemporary Commercial Singers” by Dr. Elizabeth Benson, “Get the Callback, 2nd edition” by Jonathan Flom, and the CCM, Sacred Music, Gospel, Folk Music, A Cappella, and Country editions of the “So You Want to Sing” book series. His book “So You Want to Sing Rock ‘N’ Roll?” is published by Rowman and Littlefield Publishing. It was called “an authoritative text on rock ‘n’ roll singing” by Classical Singer magazine, and is the best seller in the “So You Want to Sing” series. In high demand for his presentations and masterclasses on commercial and musical theatre voice, he has presented at the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) National Conference, NATS Summer Workshop, Voice Foundation Annual Symposium Care for the Professional Voice, Acoustical Society of America, Southeastern Theatre Conference, Virginia Theatre Association, Musical Theatre Educators Association, National Center for Voice and Speech, Pan-American Vocology Association, and Carolina Voices; NATS chapters in Toronto, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, Missouri, Arizona, Oregon, and Texas; universities including Penn State, Florida State, Brigham Young, Wright State, Georgia Southern, Otterbein, Illinois Wesleyan, Ohio Northern, Missouri State, Mary-Hardin Baylor, Texas Women’s, DeSales, Hardin Simmons, Snow College, Westminster Choir College, Lawrence Conservatory, Bårdar Academy (Oslo, Norway), University of Alabama, University of Portland, University of Toronto, University of Northern Colorado, and many others.

Why do voice lessons cost so much!?
Portrait of Harry Belafonte, singing (1954)I’ve heard parents and singers ask why voice lessons cost so much, which is interesting since I just had a European colleague ask why voice lessons in the United States are so cheap. I started thinking about this question and thought I’d share the reality of what a teacher gets paid. For this example, let’s assume that the instructor teaches 20 hours a week, charging $50 an hour and teaches 50 weeks a year. This is a little unrealistic as a work load (most teachers don’t get a consistent 50 weeks), but it gives us a nice even number to work with – $50,000. In addition to the 20 hours a week spent teaching, the teacher probably spends another 10 hours a week preparing for lessons, reading about the industry and voice pedagogy, answering emails, taking care of the books, and marketing the studio.
Now let’s look at the taxes they pay.
  • All self-employed teachers pay a 15.3% self-employment tax
  • The teacher then pays income tax at a rate of 15%.
  • Their total tax at this level comes to $12,059.
  • In Virginia, they would pay a state income tax of $720 + 5.75% (the rate for income over $17,000). The teacher’s total tax due to Virginia would be $2,414

So when it’s all said and done if you earned $50,000 a year as a single person, your take home pay would be around $35,527 (not accounting for any local taxes). That equates to a tax rate of around 29%, meaning that almost 1/3 of what you pay your teacher is going to the government.

Let’s look at one other big expense. In the U.S. you have to pay for health insurance on your own. For a single person at that income bracket, a mid-grade policy will cost around $3,204 a year (with a $3,500 deductible). That reduces the teacher’s income to around $32,323. So what’s the average hourly wage?
  • 20 hours of teaching
  • 10 hours of office work
  • For a total of 30 hours a week, times 50 weeks a year = 1,500 hours
  • Divide the take home pay of $32,323 by that amount and you get a wage of $21.55 an hour.

For a highly trained professional who likely holds a master’s degree if not a doctorate degree, that wage is rather low. Your teacher only gets to keep 65% of what you pay them. The other 35% goes to taxes and health insurance. The figures presented so far don’t even include studio rental expenses if the instructor teaches outside of the home (costs will vary). You could also add in expenses for conference and workshop attendance ($1,000-3,000 per event), both of which are critical for keeping up-to-date with the most recent scientific, pedagogic, and career information.

Hopefully you realize that voice teachers are not being greedy, they are just trying to survive. If anything, they are likely under charging for their services. The figures above do not even account for the supplies the teacher must purchase to run their business. Most teachers choose this profession because they love music and they love helping others improve their voice. They’re not trying to “take you to the cleaners” [no offense to any of you out there who happen to be cleaners :)].

~Matt

P.S. They also like Holiday gifts. Cookies are great, but gift certificates are really nice!