Scheduling students around my everyday activities was quite a chore, as I had to bounce back and forth from my Day Planner to the MTH Calendar when I was scheduling a student or makeup outside of the normal teaching hours. Then I had an IDEA! And it is working great. Music Teacher’s Helper is not just a studio manager, but also a personal manager.
I set my name up in MTH as an adult student and schedule other activities, such as personal and financial business, into the calendar of MTH. I can call up my name in the calendar and name the event that I am doing. Under categories, I created a personal, financial and a business category in different colors. Under location, I added Personal.

I can now enter a reoccurring event, such as MTH invoices sent, into the calendar using the financial category and studio location. Personal events can also be put in, so you won’t schedule a student during the personal event time. If I need a reminder, I can either enter it as an all day event, or give it a time of 12 a.m. for 5 minutes.
Every morning I receive an email from MTH and see the events for the day, including the personal appointments and tasks to do. When the task or appointment is done, I can check it off as reconciled.

I tossed my day planner and schedule all my appointments and reminders on MTH. Anyone interested in buying a used Day Planner?

If you are like me, you buy a lot of books and music. These take up valuable space and most of the time you may never read them again. Now you can go online to your library website. The library websites are almost like going to amazon.com or one of the other online bookstores. There are descriptions of the books and even pictures of the covers.

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Let’s compare two different worlds we live in–making music and using the internet.

According to Gallup polls, 95% of Americans feel that music is part of a well-rounded education. Between 78% and 93% feel that learning to play music makes people smarter, results in better grades for kids in other subjects, helps teach discipline, and helps build friendships.

A recent Harris poll has shown that 88% of people with post-graduate education were involved in music in school, and 83% of those earning over $150,000 had a music education. Researchers explained the connection between music and income partly by pointing to the life skills learned through the discipline and the strong experience of working together with others.

One of the researchers pointed out that the beauty of music is that it brings “both hard work and enjoyment together, which doesn’t always happen elsewhere.”

It certainly doesn’t happen everywhere. While music students learn about real-world struggles and rewards in a very immediate way, our growing infatuation with computers allows many to fantasize that they can “cut to the chase”– (more…)

The Studio is the room where you actually give the private lessons to your students. Everything I need to give the student a quality lesson is in this room.

The basics include chairs, music stands and instruments needed for the lesson. Since I teach guitar, bass guitar, piano and voice, I have two guitars, a bass and piano. Occasionally students will leave their guitar at home, as they will be coming from work or school. I keep an extra chair in the room for a parent or two student lesson.
A white board hangs on the wall in front of the student. I use the board to further instruct students in music theory. Chord charts and music charts hang on the wall next to the white board for the student’s reference.

I keep my laptop computer next to me so I can review the notes from the last lesson as well as input notes for the current lesson into Music Teacher’s Helper. A speaker system is also connected to play needed music, as well as a printer to print music for the student. (more…)

Rhythm is one of those things that can be hard for some students to grasp at first.  I find it best to help students “feel” the rhythm.  I didn’t quite understand rhthym until I played with a drummer, so I suggest you pull out some percussion instruments at that next lesson.  Use some rhythm flash cards to get your student playing a little tamborine or bongos.  They will be super excited to be playing the drums.  If you need a little more structure for your rhythm lessons, I would recommend Alfred’s Kid’s Drum Method. 

The other thing you can do is incorporate dance.  Dancing will get your student literally feeling the beat once and for all.  Try learning a few basic salsa or swing moves and teach your kids how to dance and count the beat.  You can even add a little music history depending on the dance style you pick.  Jazz history for swing dancing, Latin music history for salsa.

 Now get shakin’.

The virtuoso fiddler Richard Greene once gave a workshop at a national strings conference and pointed out that in his opinion it was very important for music teachers to perform. It keeps us in touch with why we love music, puts teaching in perspective, gives us more to offer students, gives students more respect for their teacher, and attracts more students who want to play like you.

Weddings, parties, orchestras and bands, gigs with small ensembles at restaurants, or fully arranged concerts, are all good outlets, requiring varying amounts of publicity and preparation.

It’s great if you have a colleague or a group to play with regularly, because you can be seen as a known quantity, an entity to hire. But even on your own, there are opportunities to pursue–sometimes a student or a student’s spouse wants you to play for their birthday party or wedding. Knowing you, they trust you to arrange for others to play with, depending on the budget.

Handling a Wedding

Weddings are sometimes trickiest to administer, because usually (hopefully) they are a one-time affair, (more…)

Every home studio needs a waiting room, bathroom and teaching studio. In this article I will tell you how I use the waiting room to promote my business and retain students.

My studio waiting room has the basic furniture, such as several recliners, rockers and a long couch. Magazines are put out on a coffee table by students, parents and me. I also have a water cooler in a corner as well as a 27″ television set hooked to cable. This is a must for a waiting room.

Other items in the waiting room are to promote and retain students, such as…

• A snack bar, which contains a variety of snacks. I look for bulk items of candy and other snacks that average about 25 cents. I sell the snacks for 75 cents, and the purchaser puts the money in a jar next to the snacks.
• The end tables display my business cards, which parents take quite frequently for interested friends. I also let the parents display business cards and fliers for their business.
• A large bulletin board displays announcements and photos of studio events.
• In the front of the room, next to the tv, is a computer which runs a PowerPoint presentation of studio news, music trivia and photos of students and various musicians. There are also reminders such as when the monthly fee is due.
• I have a payment box in the waiting room which has an opening on the lid for parents or students to drop their monthly lesson fee. This box also helps to remind them that they need to leave a payment.

I have witnessed many different activities taking place in the waiting room when I walk in following a lesson. A few of them are:

1. A mom, cross-legged on the floor, with her checks spread out, balancing her checkbook.
2. A father asleep and snoring on the couch.
3. A group of parents watching a football game, and asking if they can stay around a few more minutes.

At least once a month, when a student is in the studio on a different day and time for a makeup lesson, the student and parent find another parent and student in the waiting room who turns out to be close friends of theirs. They both knew that their children were taking music lessons, but had no idea it was from the same teacher.

Yes, the waiting room is a magical place for parents and students alike, and a valuable resource for the teacher.
What are ways you put your waiting room to use? Any suggestions?

If you are like me, buying numerous subscriptions to all of the music magazines you could be interested in would really break the bank. Plus, who has the time to hunt for articles on the topics that you are interested in. On a recent internet hunt, I found a helpful site that has access to articles from several music magazines and it is all free.

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We’ve recently had several talented individuals join the team at Music Teacher’s Helper blog. We thought it would be a good time to introduce everybody to them, so you can put a face with the posts you read. Here we are - the old faces as well as the new (and some without faces because don’t have pictures yet).

Brandon Pearce

Brandon Pearce is a piano teacher, choral director, computer programmer, and entrepreneur from Murray, Utah, and is also the creator of Music Teacher’s Helper. As his teaching studio grew, he found it increasingly difficult to keep track of how much each student owed. Having recently received a B.S. in Computer Science from Weber State University, he decided to write a web-based computer program to manage billing and scheduling in his studio. Realizing that he wasn’t alone in his studio management frustrations, he soon made the service available to other teachers. And they loved it! Since 2003, several additional programmers, and hundreds of teachers from around the world have participated in creating the world-class studio management software you know today as Music Teacher’s Helper.

Brandon currently spends his time managing and improving Music Teacher’s Helper, as well as doing freelance web design for other individuals and businesses. He has cut his studio down to 1 student (his wife), but still enjoys playing the piano, singing, and arranging/composing when he gets the chance. He is also the assistant director of the Oratorio Society of Utah, a 90+ year old choral organization that performs Handle’s Messiah each year, as well as other choral masterworks.

Ed Pearlman

Ed Pearlman studied with members of the Chicago Symphony, the Boston Symphony, and performed in the Yale Symphony and the Boston Philharmonic (a quality but nonprofessional orchestra). He continued his interest (more…)

Here are some more things we’ve improved in Music Teacher’s Helper so far this November.

• Send Automatic Event Reminders for specific categories! We improved the automatic event reminder functionality so that now you can specify which categories you want reminders to be sent for. For example, if you only want to have students emailed about group lessons or parties, but you don’t want them to receive an email reminding them of every single lesson, then you can just check those groups. (You can set this option from the “Calendar” -> “Event Reminders” menu)
• Create logins for all of your students at once! If your students register from your studio website, they can create their own login (username and password). But if you add the student yourself, you’re responsible for giving them a username and password. To make this easier for you, we created a page that allows you to check the names of the students you want to give a login to, and Music Teacher’s Helper will email them an auto-generated username and password so they can login. You can create a login for all of your students at once, or for individual students. To access this feature, go to “Students” -> “Student List” -> “Reset Student Logins”
• You can now upload .avi and .wmv movie files to your File Area.
• The Music Teacher’s Helper Blog now has a search feature so you can search through past posts, and find articles related to a certain topic. (more…)