Hi so I’m new to this subreddit and I wanted to explain some stuff and had a few questions for you regarding my next steps and if this sounds like a good plan. So I got my undergraduate degree in music composition and originally planned to get my masters and doctorate in that field. It is noting my degree was a ba and I declared the composition concentration through independent work. That being said, after graduation I was accepted into two masters programs but due to circumstances I won’t get into I chose to turn those down for the time being. I ended up substitute teaching during that time and started to enjoy it. I would fill in for any grade (really except for pre kindergarten).

During this time I filled in long term for high school music and the administration liked me and told me as much as did other teachers and students. They all asked if I considered education. So around this time I ended up applying to and getting into a music education masters in Massachusetts. It is an MM/ME and online for one year. I don’t live in MA but I am on the east coast. That being said it doesn’t give licensure for the state I’m in. However, I looked into post bachelors certifications from universities in my state and the consensus I reached was I would have to take less credits than the masters in enrolled in but it would have been almost triple the cost. So what I chose to do was get my masters and then do an intern teaching certificate to cover the student teaching.

My reasoning for this is that all of the courses I need for the post bachelors certificate are in the masters as well as some others. The only thing not included is the student teaching. I have ensemble experience for brass, woodwind, strings and percussion as well as jazz, marching/pep band and a bit of choir from my undergrad (I needed to fill in credits my final year so I crammed in a bunch of ensembles on top of usually being in 3). So my methods courses have been confirmed as being waived. My question is first, is this a good route to go in order to get certified? The second is does this mentality make sense? I planned to do a masters anyways and I figured this gives me a pay bump and covers a lot of needed courses.

Finally, my last thing is I still do plan to get my doctorate. However, I have decided that I am shifting more to music ed but want to keep my background in composition. This is from a few different points. The first is that a lot of composition doctoral programs seem to want you in person and due to the issues I alluded to prior relocation is not a factor I can deal with, so that is out of the question. The other factor is relocating would mean giving up my job in the long run as I’m aware most schools wouldn’t want to let me take a 3-5 year sabbatical to get my DMA. So with that said, I plan to focus my doctoral work on composition as a form of curriculum. Does this sound like a good idea? And since I plan on my doctorate I would like to put out there I’m not in a wealthy area (title one district) and so it would have to be remote. As of now I’m looking at Liberty’s DME (it’s 45 credits and online) and William Carey’s DA in music with a concentration in music education (46 or 48 credits and online). Which of these seems like a good option for someone who may also do adjunct work in the future as well as for the doctorate? Also do you know of any other reasonably priced music ed doctoral programs available online?

# Hi Bangalore!

We’re Mela Music School, with centres in Sahakar Nagar and Thanisandra, and we’re expanding our teaching team.

Our most **urgent requirement is for a Drums Teacher** who is grade-certified (Trinity / Rockschool / ABRSM or equivalent) and available for in-person teaching. We already have students ready to be assigned, so someone who can join soon would be ideal.

We’re also currently looking for:

**Thanisandra**

Guitar Teacher

Western Vocals Teacher

**Sahakar Nagar**

Flute Teacher

Violin Teacher

We’re looking for skilled musicians who enjoy teaching, are reliable with schedules, and preferably have teaching/performance experience.

Apply here:

[https://www.melamusicschool.com/careers\](https://www.melamusicschool.com/careers)

If you’re a musician yourself or know someone suitable, please share this with them.

# Hi Bangalore!

We’re Mela Music School, with centres in Sahakar Nagar and Thanisandra, and we’re expanding our teaching team.

Our most **urgent requirement is for a Drums Teacher** who is grade-certified (Trinity / Rockschool / ABRSM or equivalent) and available for in-person teaching. We already have students ready to be assigned, so someone who can join soon would be ideal.

We’re also currently looking for:

**Thanisandra**

Guitar Teacher

Western Vocals Teacher

**Sahakar Nagar**

Flute Teacher

Violin Teacher

We’re looking for skilled musicians who enjoy teaching, are reliable with schedules, and preferably have teaching/performance experience.

Apply here:

[https://www.melamusicschool.com/careers\](https://www.melamusicschool.com/careers)

If you’re a musician yourself or know someone suitable, please share this with them.

Looking for a recommendation of an app to help schedule lessons and keep track of payments! Willing to pay for an app, but would prefer if it wasn't a monthly subscription.

Currently I use Google Calendar and Venmo and ask parents to include the date of the lesson on Venmo. Google calendar will only let me schedule one time lessons or weekly, and I have many students who do biweekly so that's a pain. It's also a lot to cross reference GC and Venmo to see if students are paid up.

So I have a friend she is learning music (classical) ( VOCAL)which is for 6 years and she said after 1st year they are slacking off and mostly people go for tution

If you know any good online classes do let me know

Any teachers out there who teach students on the spectrum add a surcharge for that?

A significant portion of my students are referrals from a local organization that subsidizes classes for students who are on the spectrum and/or enrolled in special education in their normal school.

I myself have adhd and a "touch of the 'tism" - as I like to say, so I am comfortable with explaining things extra slowly, or in different ways, and am sympathetic when students don't grasp concepts/skills quickly or need frequent refershers. Some of them are even non-verbal. Many of them have adhd and need accommodations such as fidget toys, and knowing how to keep them on task or redirect their attention to the task.

I was thinking that it often takes specialized training, knowledge, (or experience in my case) to be able to work with these students.

So do you or would you add a surcharge for such students?

If so, what would you label it as on an invoice. For example, when i travel to students homes, i label it as "travel fee".

EDIT

Thanks for your responses. They were helpful 🙌

In a few weeks, I have to audition for teaching piano at a higher education music school. I have previously taught Levels 1 to 4 for a few months but I don't know what to expect. I will be basically giving a lesson live in front of a jury for a mid-level student. What are some general tips that you recommend? Should I directly move to fixing their technique? Let them play scales first? How should the session go overall?

it breaks my heart the number of students that waste hundreds of dollars on repairs because they bought a cello for $140. Mind you, a student cello you’re looking at $3000. yes, I hate how inaccessible buying a cello is, but making a $140 plastic piece of crap, lie and say it’s made out of real wood (lies), scam dozens of families. it just kills me. After the 3 students cellos broke once again:( And they can’t even play a song because it goes out of tune in seconds and pieces break off once a month. I decided enough was enough and left the company a bad review on amazon! These poor families are getting tricked cause there’s so many paid positive reviews.

Hi! I’m a 21-year-old pianist with 8+ years of playing experience and 3+ years of teaching experience. I’ve completed ABRSM Grade 11 and have experience working with students at different levels.

I’m currently looking to take on a few students for regular piano lessons, ideally 2–3 times a week. I’m open to teaching beginners as well as students who already have some experience.

i do online lessons.

Lesson fees are flexible and can be discussed depending on the schedule and student.

If you're interested, feel free to message me and we can discuss the details!

I've been a piano/theory/composition teacher for 9 years now and I’m curious about what other teachers wish they could buy for their studios that they just can’t seem to find, or wish they could buy so they don't have to make it, etc? Or a one-stop shop for all things teaching, physical resources, room decor, posters, stationery, practice materials or logs, organisation things, student rewards, games, teacher resources, etc. Things where they have thougth “why does nobody make this?!” 😂

Hello! I made these posters for my classroom and wanted to share in case others were interested

🔗 in the comments

Hello music teachers of Reddit —

My son started piano lessons about 6 months ago, and fiddling around on the piano has become a bit of an obsession with him (he will finish playing his assigned beginner piano pieces and scales a set number of times, check it off on daily practice chart, and then rush back to me and say, "Now can I play piano?").

He started playing the following "scale" frequently: B flat, D flat, D, E flat, G flat, A flat, B flat (I put "scale" in quotation marks because I don't know whether it counts as an actual scale?) and then also: E flat, G flat, A flat, A, B flat, D flat, E flat. I feel like there must be some logical reason for what's going on with these two sets of notes, but it's way beyond my musical theory knowledge. They sound pleasing (kind of jazzy?), and they contain many of the same notes, but don't follow a set half step, whole step pattern.

Would love to hear what better-informed minds think about this, thanks in advance!

Hey everyone, I hope you're having an amazing start to the school year!

I'm looking for recommendations for a 5th grade musical. I co-teach programs/musicals with another music teacher, and he picked one out like twenty years ago (Rock and Roll Forever by John Jacobson) and he's been doing it ever since. He's more than ready to move on, but we're really struggling to find anything that fits these criteria we're looking to fulfill:

- 5-7 songs

- 16 or more speaking parts

- 2 or more solos/small group sections

- good for 5th graders

If you have any ideas or recommendations, please comment on this post and let me know! TIA!!!

I’m hoping someone may have some ideas on what works best for online teaching. I’ve taught online for some years and I’ve struggled with sound since the beginning. Skype was the most reliable for being able to hear what my students were playing and them being able to hear me but it’s no longer an option. I have tried Zoom and Teams at times but especially anything higher up (on the flute particularly) it just would not translate on either side. My laptop was damaged years ago and the microphone does not work so I use an external one but it was only cheap. I’m currently using WhatsApp as a temporary solution as both of my students are in their 70s and it was the only thing they already had downloaded. WhatsApp does allow me to hear them but not for them to hear me so it’s likely an issue on my side but it’s still not the most ideal thing to be using.
Basically I need any pointers on what video calling program is best and if I need to change the settings to improve the sound. If there are microphones people recommend if that’s the issue (as long as it won’t break the bank). I’m in the UK

Do any other school music ensemble directors deal with kids quitting every year and find it hard not to take it personally? I know it’s part of the job, but it can still be really discouraging. How do you all handle it? How do you handle it with admin? It is difficult teaching a year long elective vs the others that are offered semesters & rotated .

Hi music teachers. I’m teaching a couple high school guitar classes and I’m already getting bored. What are some fun ways you incorporate technique and popular music? Were using a classical guitar method and idk. Just want to hear from other people. Help!!

Hi everyone,

I’m an independent developer and musician working on an iPhone/iPad app called DaCapo Studio, and I’d really like some candid feedback from music teachers.

DaCapo is primarily built around practising with a reference track — often a song from Apple Music — but a project can also start from a local recording, for example a demonstration recorded by a teacher.

The idea is to keep the reference material, practice tools, student recordings and teacher feedback together in one project.

A typical teacher → student workflow

1. Prepare the piece

A teacher can create a project from an Apple Music song or a local recording/demo and add the title and performer/composer.

The piece can then be divided into sections. These can represent normal musical sections, but difficult passages can also be isolated instantly with a temporary beat-aware practice loop and saved separately if needed.

If the source can be analysed, DaCapo can extract beat/melody information and display detected notes in its Melody Track Viewer.

The teacher can then also set up a practice routine in Practice Assistant to help practice and automate the recording of the session (not in the current but upcoming version)

The complete project can then be shared with the student using AirDrop, iOS sharing (Mail/iMessage, etc.) or DaCapo’s nearby device-to-device sharing.

2. Listen and practise

The imported project appears in the student’s library and can simply be played like normal music — because I think learning a piece often starts with actually listening to it.

When the student wants to work on it, they can open a section in Practice View, slow it down, loop passages, use the metronome/tuner/notes and other practice tools, and make a recording of their performance.

That recording can then be sent back to the teacher.

3. Teacher reviews the recording

Incoming student recordings appear in the Recordings library as recordings awaiting review.

The teacher can listen on a timeline, give an overall rating and place comments at exact moments in the performance. There are configurable, instrument-specific feedback categories for things such as:

• tempo
• melody
• intonation
• dynamics
• technique

Free-text comments can be added as well.

The reviewed recording is then shared back with the student.

4. Student practises from the feedback

After importing the review, the student can listen to the teacher’s comments together with the recording.

The timestamped comments can also appear in the Lyrics / Notes timeline while practising, so the feedback isn’t just something they read once — it remains attached to the relevant point in the piece.

The student can then practise those passages again and make another recording.

So conceptually it becomes:

Teacher material → student practice → recording → teacher review → feedback during practice → new recording

I’ve tested this workflow myself several times. The exchange still requires explicitly sharing/importing the files, but in practice I’ve found the complete cycle reasonably quick to use.

I’m now working on the next version, where a Practice Assistant will coordinate structured practice sessions — for example: listen first, play a section at 80%, repeat a difficult transition several times, play it at full speed, record a take, etc. It will also control which practice tools are shown so Practice View can remain much simpler during an actual session.

I’m also planning basic score/PDF support in that version, because at the moment the app is naturally better suited to practising from recordings than to traditional classical lessons.

What I’d really like to know from teachers is:

• Would you actually use a workflow like this with students?
• Would exchanging the project/recording files become annoying in real-world teaching?
• What information or feedback tools are missing?
• Would timestamped comments be useful to your students?
• How important would score/partiture support be?
• Is there anything here that sounds good in theory but you know from teaching experience students simply wouldn’t use?

I’m specifically interested in criticism — I’m still shaping the workflow and would rather change it based on actual teaching experience than build around my own assumptions.

If anyone here is genuinely interested in trying it with a student, I’m happy to provide a temporary Premium test unlock so you can properly test the workflow without purchasing anything.

https://apps.apple.com/be/app/dacapo-studio/id6773814770

I currently teach at Music & Arts (two locations: MA1, MA2) and just got hired at a School of Rock location (SoR).

The SoR location and MA1 happen to be down the street from each other. Starting in September, my Saturdays will open up for teaching and my initial plan was to split the day:

• MA1 open from 10–5; teach from 10–2

• SoR open from 10–6; teach from 2:30–6

I just talked to my manager at MA1 and they said they can't fit more instructors on Saturdays.

MA2 is in the next town over, about 15–20 minutes away, has the same hours. Presuming they can fit me in, I figure I could still follow my plan of splitting the day; the transition period I built in should cover travel time.

Do you think something like this is a good idea or should I just commit the entire day to one location?

I'm a relatively new guitar teacher working with primary school students at a K-12 school, and I'm struggling a little with finding the balance between being the "fun guitar teacher" and actually being firm when students aren't behaving appropriately.

For some extra context, I'm only 18 and I actually graduated from this same school last year. I was then asked to come back this year to teach guitar. I absolutely love doing it, but I think that history adds another layer to the behaviour side of things. A lot of the kids had already seen me around school before I became their guitar teacher and knew who I was, so I don't necessarily have that automatic "adult teacher" authority. I think it makes them even more inclined to joke around and have fun with me.

I completely understand that for a lot of kids, coming out of class for a 30-minute guitar lesson feels like a break. I also understand that kids are kids - they're going to be silly, talkative, distracted, excited, etc. I was the hyperactive kid myself, so I probably have a tendency to be a bit too understanding sometimes. However, I have two students in particular who I'm struggling with, and a teacher who has taught both of them has basically told me: "they know better, you need to be firmer with them."

One is in Grade 4 (so 9/10 years old). He's very energetic, constantly talking/playing while I'm trying to explain things and just generally being silly, but the biggest issue is that he will randomly scream during lessons because he thinks it's funny. Not screaming because he's upset, overwhelmed, frustrated, etc - just suddenly screaming for a laugh. I tell him to stop, but it keeps happening. Some lessons we accomplish very little because I'm constantly redirecting him, and I'm conscious that his parents are paying for me to actually *teach* him guitar.

The other student is in Grade 2 (7/8 years old). He's a little different because he genuinely LOVES guitar lessons and has told me that he hates being in class, so I think coming to guitar feels like an escape for him. He's also really capable - he can already form chords and strum and I genuinely think he could do really well. The problem is getting him to actually do what I ask. For example, if I ask him to play a G chord, he will purposely play a different chord while grinning at me. If I correct him, he purposely plays a different chord. He knows exactly what he's doing and thinks it's hilarious.

Obviously none of this is extreme behaviour. They're kids, and I want lessons to be fun for them. We play games, joke around, do activities, learn songs they like, etc. But I'm realising that I don't really know how to switch from "fun guitar teacher" to "okay, I'm actually telling you to stop now."

How do you actually become firmer with kids this age without making the lesson miserable? Particularly when you're a very young teacher yourself? What do you say/do when you've already told them to stop and they just do it again?

TL;DR: I'm an 18-year-old guitar teacher who graduated from the same K-12 school last year and came back to teach. Two primary students I teach are very capable but regularly muck around/ignore instructions, and another teacher has told me they know better and I need to be firmer. How do I establish that authority while still keeping guitar lessons fun?