What is the atmosphere of your recitals? Is it a constructive experience for students?

When I was 5, I played in my first recital. The academy of music where I took piano lessons required several recitals a year from every student. One or two of them were more informal, in the huge attic of the very large house that served as the academy’s home, and then there was the end-of-year recital, which seemed enormous to a kid. It was held at a church, with lots of players and a big audience, and a scary walk to the piano–but there were printed programs with our names and pieces in them, and we got to be called up individually to receive our annual pins, showing how many years we’d been studying.

My own students do their own kind of “recitals” which I will explain, but I’ve also been to recitals as a parent of kids taking music lessons–some recitals have been well put together, and some not so well done.

Let’s look at a few kinds of recitals and what seemed to make them work or not work–for me, anyway. Hopefully this will jog your thoughts and perhaps you might think of ideas for freshening up your own studio recitals in some way. As always, we all appreciate comments added to these posts, which shed some light on your thoughts and experiences in putting on recitals.
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Those of you who use Music Teacher’s Helper regularly probably noticed the announcement after logging in, about the possible updates to the invoicing system. There was also a link to take a survey and let us know your thoughts.

A big THANK YOU to everyone who participated in the invoicing survey! We had a lot of great response, and some wonderfully insightful comments. Below, I will list some of the results of the survey, along with what we propose to change with the invoicing system (yes, according to many of you, something does have to change). I’ll post a screenshot as well so you can see what we’re thinking. And we’d like to know what you think about these changes as well, so post your comments below.

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If you ever have students who cancel lessons, or if you want to issue credits to your students for any reason, you’re going to love these recent changes!

First, if you charge “per lesson”, marking a lesson as cancelled used to make it “not charged”, or it waived the fee. This is no longer the case. Marking the attendance alone no longer effects the student’s amount due. Now you get to decide whether or not you want to issue a credit (refund) for that lesson.

When you reconcile the lesson, there is now an option to “Issue a credit”. You can specify the amount you want to credit back for that lesson, enter any notes, and the credit is created automatically. But we’ve also added an item under the “Billing” -> “Fees & Credits” menu (formerly “Fees Charged” menu) to make it easier for you to issue a credit to your students at any time. You can still create a “negative fee” like before, but we thought the new “Issue Credit” option was a bit more intuitive.

Now, it gets even more exciting. Before, when a student logged in and wanted to cancel their lesson, in order for it to actually be cancelled, you had to login also and “accept” or “deny” the cancellation. Now, the lesson is simply cancelled as soon as the student says they can’t make it, you get an instant email about it, and no further action is required on your part! If you do want to issue a refund for that lesson you can do so from the Fees & Credits menu mentioned above. This is so much simpler!

Note that you can also now reconcile an event at any time - you don’t need to wait until you teach it.

We hope you like the new improvements. Keep sending us your ideas and feedback!

Thanks and have a great day!

I’d like to call your attention to some very useful ideas about scheduling students using Music Teachers Helper; these ideas were suggested by Tina in response to my post a couple of weeks ago. Take a look at her comments at the end of that post, Tips for Easier Lesson Scheduling. She even has PDF examples of how she does it.

The basic idea is to add your own categories, such as “available”, “makeup lesson”, “group lesson”, or whatever you’d like to track or offer to students–and then color-code them to make them easier to see.

For example, I’ve taken to listing available lesson times (more…)

We are constantly making changes to Music Teacher’s Helper - just about every week - even though we don’t always post a blog entry about it. The reason we don’t always mention it is because some changes are fairly insignificant. But today we made some improvements that will hopefully ease some of the frustration that’s been going around because of the invoicing system.

Back in May we launched a completely new invoicing system that has received both positive and negative reviews from our customers. Teachers have loved the Invoice History, and the ability to resend or reprint past invoices.

Some of the recent problems people have been experiencing with the invoicing system are: (more…)

Memorizing a piece of music is different from learning it. Musicians who rely on written music, and then memorize it, have taken only a first step toward learning it.

Learning a piece of music involves making it your own, not just remembering the notes.

As I understand it, research shows that playing music involves many areas of the whole brain, whereas reading music focuses on the visual and language centers. When we learn a piece of music we give it a much broader dimension than we can when we read it.

Reading music is essential for tapping into the vast repertoire of music available to us. But learning by ear is a skill and a strategy that quickly gives a musician a direct relationship to the music.

Incorporating teaching by ear into your methods, even if only a little here and there, can add confidence, musicality, and dimension to a student’s playing.

As one who teaches mostly by ear, I often (more…)

We would like to congratulate Michelle Mastin from San Carlos, California, who won our August 2007 Referral Contest! She referred the most teachers who signed up for either a free plan or free trial membership by August 31, and has won a one-year free subscription to Music Teacher’s Helper!

But the contest isn’t over! Remember that for every person you refer who signs up for a paying membership by September 30th (and begins paying for their subscription), you will receive one month free! So if you refer five teachers who sign up for a paying plan by September 30th, you get the next five months free!

In order for us to track your referrals, make sure you are sending them your special referral link by clicking the “Referral Contest” link at the top, after you login.

We would like to thank everyone who has been participating in this referral contest, and for the great feedback we are constantly receiving from you.

Happy teaching!