1. In learning music, as with many other skills, good habits lead to good results. All music teachers seek to build good habits.

2. Good habits come from discipline. The dictionary lists a dozen definitions of “discipline” but I suspect the most important types of discipline are only two: external and internal.

3. Musicianship, though it requires discipline, is more than a skill. It draws upon something deeper than habit. Some teachers consider musicianship fundamental; others feel technical skill must be established first.

4. Being aware of differences between external and internal discipline can help us lead students to good habits, good results, and good musicianship. Sometimes teachers and parents, or adult students, seem to have very different presumptions about what discipline is. Some uses of external discipline confuse management with teaching (school systems often carry this to an extreme).

5. “Internal” discipline is shaped by inspiration, pride, determination. It can be built (more…)

Because of several requests from teachers, we have now added a simple Email History page showing the email messages you have recently sent to your students. You can see the subject, the date the message was sent, and can see the names of all students and parents the message was set to.

You can access the Email History from the “Students” tab, under the “Email Students” menu.

Enjoy!

Over time, we’ve had a few requests from teachers who want to be able to keep track of make-up lessons in Music Teacher’s Helper. We’ve also had requests from teachers who want to setup available lesson times, and let students pick from available slots on a first-come, first-serve basis.

One of our most active members came up with a brilliant idea that will let you do both of these right now. Here is what he said: (more…)

Do you have any rhythm war stories–student rhythm problems that have seemed intractable, or bizarre, or puzzling, or just comical?

Here are a few of mine, following up on last week’s blog. I hope you’ll add some of your experiences by clicking “Add Comment” below; I’m sure others, like me, would like to hear more!

Carol could not count beats as she was playing. After some experimentation we found that if she moved enough physically while playing, she could feel the beats and play the timings of the piece quite well. It turned out that she was so visually oriented that if she thought of “beat one,” for example, she would actually visualize the letters “O-N-E” and become distracted.

In an October blog (Music is Time) I mentioned my 72-year-old student, Harry, who at one lesson reduced all the quarters and eighths of a piece to straight eighth notes in order to “save time.”

Ruth and Christine had very unusual rhythm problems. One performed with a group regularly but came to me with a “rhythm problem” that involved a simple rhythm in 4/4 time. The other was the leader of an amateur group but always managed to rush the beat while leading her players. Both had such puzzling and persistent rhythm issues that I was suddenly reminded of the book, Soprano On Her Head, and tried a radical approach. I got up the nerve to ask a seemingly weird question (more…)

Today we announced four new templates for your personalized studio website! These professionally designed themes will allow you to customize the look and feel of your website to match your personality and give your studio a more professional image.

In addition to customizing the look and feel of your website, your studio website now also includes (more…)

Music Teacher’s Helper has a feature that allows your students to pay you with their credit card. In addition to this, you can setup automatic data entry through Paypal’s IPN (Instant Payment Notification) settings in your Paypal account, which will automatically enter any payments your students make, directly into your Music Teacher’s Helper account so you don’t have to do any data entry when you receive an online payment. Learn more about receiving payments from your students.

Students have always been able to login to Music Teacher’s Helper and pay you. But recently, we added a “Pay Now” link on the invoices you send to your students, to save them an extra step and make it even easier for them to pay you. (more…)

It’s pretty common for people to think they have “rhythm problems.” But what do people really mean by this?

Consider how natural it is for us to have excellent rhythm in daily life, and then go figure why people draw a blank when it comes to musical rhythms. For example, if we were to measure our stride as we walk down the street, I’ll bet our steps would probably be so regular as to be milliseconds apart in timing. If we wrote down the rhythms of our daily conversations, they would be much more complex than almost any music we play. In fact, talking is the best example of how rhythmic we are, because music is so closely related to talking and singing.

I recently had a student who claimed he had a “rhythm problem” and couldn’t play with the proper timings. I asked him to pretend there was a servant at the door, and asked him to order his servant to take out the garbage. (I suggested this because we always issue commands with a strong rhythm…but it is amusing, the ideas that pop out in the heat of a lesson, no?)

He said, “Take the GARbage out!” with “take the” as pickup notes to the “GAR” downbeat. In 6/8 time, this would have been written: quarter, eighth (bar line) quarter, eighth, quarter (see example above).

Then I asked him to say it three times in a row. (more…)

Connie, from Connie’s Violin Page, has recently archived several sets of informal surveys from music teachers around the world.

I found it very interesting to see what other teachers in different parts of the world charge for lessons, what their practicing habits are, and what students think makes a good teacher.

Take a look at the results! Maybe you’ll find something useful to help you in your own studio. (more…)

Happy New Year!

Did you know that the usual melody for that “Auld Lang Syne” song you may have sung a few nights back was not the original melody for the song?

If you’d like to hear the song as originally intended by Robert Burns over 200 years ago, click here to open a new window–go to the bottom of the page to the last song and listen to a sample of Auld Lang Syne using the original melody, on one of the Burns CDs from Linn Records (Their series contains the first and only recording of all 323 of Burns’s songs, performed by over 100 of the best contemporary musicians in Scotland.)

Burns collected the song, which was already old at the time, and added some of his own words to it, to make it the song we know now. The melody we’re used to singing was apparently selected by (more…)