I’ve seen many improvements in Music Teachers Helper in the past year, and the File Upload Area is one of them. Often, the improvements have clearly been in direct response to teacher suggestions. That’s one great thing about this service–your ideas are listened to.

I don’t know how many teachers requested the file upload area, but I know I was hoping for something of that kind, after I started emailing recordings to students (see A Great Teaching Tool from 10/28).

The File Upload area is a great idea with real potential. I haven’t had time to really work it into my routine yet, but if you haven’t tried it, let me tell you some of the ways you can use it to save time and provide more service and value to your students.

If you have used it, I’m probably not alone in wanting to hear from you about how you are using it, and how well it works for you. Just add a comment at the end of this article.

The Where and How of It

The File Area is on the submenu of the “Student” tab. That’s where you can upload a file for your students’ use, and it can be a word processing file, a picture, recording, movie, music software file, a PDF file–just about any kind of useful file to share.

You can either have the file available to everyone in the Resources of your home page, or you can select which of your students have access to it. They can get to it via their “Home” tab menu.

The Benefits

What’s great about this is that you can upload recordings, photos, sheet music, etc., and store it there. When it’s time for a student to have a copy of one of these, you can just add them to the list of those who can access that file. It can save on preparation for teaching, avoiding finding originals, making copies, and can make available materials such as recordings, photos or videos, that you probably wouldn’t give a student at a lesson.

It’s perfect for uploading class lists, handouts, and recordings–including (more…)

Planning a podcast is not as hard as you might think. With an idea of the type of podcast you would like to do and a little planning, you can create an outline for your show in just a few minutes and be ready to broadcast on the world wide web! (more…)

When I moved to Denver, Colorado from Atlanta, Georgia eight years ago, I started working for a company that built computers. I began advertising for music students in my home for January 2001 by leaving brochures at a national chain music company, Guitar Center. By April 2001 I had signed up thirty students and had to quit my job at the computer company. I gave the music lessons in the finished basement area of my town home, providing me enough area for a waiting room, restroom, and two teaching studios.
I currently keep between forty and fifty guitar, bass guitar, piano and voice students, as well as teach music full time at a local high school. Most of my private students are referrals, although I continue to leave business cards and brochures at the music store as well as in schools.

There are advantages and disadvantages to having a home music studio. However, the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages of a home music business. Let’s start with the advantages.

ADVANTAGES

1. Working your business from home gives you many tax deductions, including utilities and mortgage interest or rent deductions.
2. You have more control over the studio enviroment verses working as a teacher in a music store. You can design the layout of the studio and use furniture/equipment that works the best for you and your students.
3. There are no music studio rental fees to pay.
4. Parents enjoy the relaxed atmosphere of a home studio waiting room. In a music store, parents usually wait in hallways on metal chairs. Many times parents and students from two different families will run into each other during lessons, not knowing that the other family also took lessons in the same studio.

Disadvantages

1. Wear and tear on carpets, walls, entrance door, etc. Students carrying instruments often put small holes in the walls.
2. Housekeeping needs to be done regularly, such as cleaning the bathroom, waiting room and studio, vaccuming, refilling supplies such as toilet paper, paper towels, and paper cups. And when it snows or rains, students and their family tend to track debris and mud into your home.
3. There is an increase in your utility bills. On some occasions, students leaving the home left the front door open, causing the heat or air to stay on.

Next week I will discuss the layout of my studio, beginning with the Waiting Room. I will show you how I use the waiting room to market my business and handle collections while providing the students and parents a relaxing atmosphere. This is the room where the lessons begin and end.
The studio should work for you, helping you to recruit new students, retain current students, and provide the best learning enviroment for both you and your students.

I look forward to your comments and advice on your experiences in running a music studio business at home. What do you see as advantages and disadvantages? What are your success stories with your home music studio? What are your strategies?

Last month, I discussed ideas for finding new students. In this post, I want to talk about ways to keep students interested and loyal to you. Some of those ideas involve:

* The use of games
* Incentives
* Attitude
* The “Free Prize”

Hope you find these ideas helpful.

THE USE OF GAMES

A few years ago, I decided that I needed to make my lessons a little lighter, more laid back. I wasn’t a strict, hair pulled in a bun school marm or anything, but I felt I wasn’t having as much fun in my lessons. I don’t think my students were either. So I decided to make some games that would help teach musical concepts. Some games I invented myself, others I pulled from websites such as lessonplanspage.com and printablemusicgames.com. After only playing the games with an individual student once, I noticed that their enthusiasm for their lessons increased. (more…)

I’ve been “reading” the great new book by Daniel Levitin called This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. The book examines scientific observations about how music affects our brains and vice versa. It’s especially fascinating for music teachers.

I recommend it very highly, though not the way I’m trying to “read” it, which is by listening to it. My new mp3 player came with a free month of Audible.com so I chose this book, but I found it pretty hard to follow a nonfiction book read out loud. No chance to flip back a few pages and reread a few key points. (And don’t dare daydream or you miss a page!)

I’d like to mention here just a few interesting points raised in the book–about practicing, ear training, and the effect of music lessons on brain development. I hope to refer again to this book in some future blog posts as well.

Practicing

Levitin describes an experiment where researchers tried to define “talent.”  They examined music students who were regarded as most talented, and invariably found that those students who were the best musicians (more…)

We’re always working to improve Music Teacher’s Helper, thanks to feedback from teachers like you. We haven’t always posted our updates in the past, but we’d like to start doing so more frequently. Some changes are very small but it may be helpful for you to know.

First, we have added two new video tutorials. One shows you how to setup your studio website, including changing your theme/layout, editing your teaching policy, uploading photos, and more. The other shows you what a student sees when they log in to their Music Teacher’s Helper account.

Other recent small changes:

• You can now upload .mus and .sib files to your File Area (Finale and Sibelius music notation files)
• Added “start date” to repertoire tracker and added it to show on the list of pieces for a student
• Fixed an event cancellation and registration bug that wasn’t adding/removing the students as a participant in the event properly
• Added a “notes” field to the parent info page (more…)