Private Lessons

Dear Parents and Students,

Private lessons are a huge benefit to growing and excelling as a musician. For those who don’t know, private lessons are where you meet one-on-one with a professional musician on your instrument. It is similar to tutoring, but not in that you are behind and need to catch up.

Taking private lessons helps you to grow further and faster as a musician. Simply put, no matter how much individual attention is attempted in our full band rehearsals, it cannot compare to working on your instrument with someone one-on-one. For this reason, I strongly encourage students to take private lessons with professional instructors on a regular basis.

What are the benefits of taking weekly private music lessons? The list is endless! Some of the obvious student motivations for studying privately could include the immediate satisfaction: to get better, to do well on a playing test, to receive a scholarship, to become first chair, to make it into youth orchestra, to make it into All-District or All-State Band, or to make it into Symphonic Band. These are immediate and worthy goals. However, we may want to consider them only a starting point on our musical journey.

You may wish to consider some of the less obvious benefits of private study that do not exclude initial motivations but could be beyond our initial grasp. These might include learning to solve problems independently, learning to work within timelines to complete projects, learning to cope with stress, learning how to get back on the horse after we fall off, learning how to practice, learning how to take pride in an accomplishment, and learning how to work as a member of a team.

It should be apparent that all of these items listed begin with “learning how to.” This is extremely important. In a private lesson situation, teachers have the opportunity to work individually and directly with a student, at their own rate of progress in the process of learning. This is key to good teaching and the cornerstone of private lessons. Private teachers act as a guide to the process of self-discovery through music. If these are not foreign ideas to us, then we should applaud our child’s desire to seek lessons with a private teacher and support him or her in that undertaking wholeheartedly.

I sincerely hope that you will consider the investment of studying privately. With all investments, there is a return that will be the defining entity that warrants extreme success. It is my sincere hope that at least some of the ideas presented here will stimulate your thought process regarding private music lessons. I have attached a list of recommended private instructors, many of which are used by our students with great success (look for shaded names). I would be happy to help narrow down your selection of an instructor based on your student’s individual needs – please do not hesitate to ask. I hope you will consider giving your students a great opportunity to go beyond the classroom in their music education with private instruction.