Music Teachers Blog

We’ve been receiving reports that some teachers are being logged out of the system at different times. Some teachers get logged out when they try to access specific pages. Other teachers can login, but if they try to do anything else, they are brought back to the login page. It doesn’t appear to be happening to everyone, but the problems seems to have been going on for about a week now, according to some reports, and to enough people that we think we thought we would blog about it.

We are looking into what might be causing this issue and appreciate your patience as we work to resolve it. If you have been experiencing this issue, I apologize for the inconvenience it has caused, and ask that you send us any details about your experience with the issue to help us resolve it more quickly. (more…)

If you are as busy as most private music instructors, you don’t have a ton of time to create worksheets for your students. There is a great website out there that has tons of customizable worksheets and online exercises for your students. The best part, most of it is free!

Practicespot.com has tons of online resources to help music teachers build a better studio and experience for their students. With the Practice Spot Rhythm Machine you can test your sight reading skills with thousands of automatically generated rhythms. You will never have to come up with rhythm exercises for your students again. Just punch in few requirements, hit generate and you will get up to 12 measures of rhythmic challenges just for your student.

With the scales chef, you can generate your own manual of scales and for a little bit extra it will create arpeggios and more as well and you don’t even have to break out the music notation software. The sight reading chef and sight reading genie will give you tons of sight reading exercises as well. It should take them quite a while to burn through all of those sight reading exercises.

There is also a note identification game, manuscript generator, dictionary of 1200 musical terms and a music theory sheet generator. This site really is the all in one site for your students and a great resource for the busy music teacher as well.

If you use Music Teacher’s Helper, you are a teacher, but do you also perform?  If so, how do you balance these two roles?

Your comments on this topic are very welcome below.

Two different approaches:  A friend of mine who has performed and toured for many years told me recently that she has come to realize she enjoys teaching more than performing, and now emphasizes her time with students.  As to me, I have always enjoyed working with students, and have quite a few, but I also value performing such that if there’s a conflict, I generally rearrange my lessons to accommodate the gig, regardless of financial consequences.  I feel it’s good for my skills, connections, and exposure, and if I’m not performing enough, teaching feels more like a job, rather than a chance to encourage students and share my expertise with them.

Do you find yourself leaning more towards teaching or performing?  What are the benefits and drawbacks to students of having a performing teacher?  What are the benefits and drawbacks of performing, from the perspective of a teacher?

The benefits for a student of having a performing teacher include a sense of pride that the teacher is known and respected for playing music.  Even though lessons may not be as regular when a teacher performs or even tours, most students are pleased to know (more…)

I have been checking out a site called bluesbackingtracks.com and asked to review the site. Many of us have students that are learning scales to play with accompaniment. This site offers the accompaniment in form of a band in many different keys and styles. By emailing the author for a demo, he quickly sends you as an email attachment a five minute demo. The purchase price for a full twenty minute track is $9.95. The quality is good. I have been trying the demo out with students improvising with the pentatonic scale, and it has worked quite well. I can spend my time helping the student as he playing to the demo.

I would like your opinion and review for this site and services also.

Below is the comment sent by the author of the site: (more…)

Per some requests on my last post, I have decided to talk about the online resources I use for my lessons. The Internet is a wonderful way to make life more simple for the modern music teacher. I especially love iTunes, musicnotes.com, and OF COURSE: Music Teacher’s Helper! You already knowhow to use MTH. I’ll tell you what to do with the other 2.

iTunes Store

The iTunes Store is a magic land of karaoke tracks for voice students. Does your student want to sing a showtune? iTunes has it. “Lovesong” by Sarah Bareilles? Well as a matter of fact they have both the acoustic AND full band karaoke tracks. I even found a beautiful arrangement of the 24 Italian songs that so many voice students learn to sing. Instead of just a piano, they can now sing along to classical guitars and cellos! (The arranger’s name is John Davies…just type it into the search.) If you don’t have a mac, you will have to go to the iTunes Store.

Most songs are only 99 cents, and I recommend using MTH to charge the student 99 cents plus $1 for the CDR you will put it on for your student. Just use the “Charge a fee” option in your MTH account and charge it to your student. This saves your student the headache of finding the song herself, and you know exactly what song she or he will be singing along too. (more…)

Many music teachers wonder what they should put on their teaching studio website.

To answer this question, the first thing you need to ask yourself is, “What is the purpose of my website?” Are you using your studio website mainly as a place to attract new music students, to showcase your experience and abilities, or to service your existing students? (Or a combination of all of these?)

This post will cover how to attract new students to your website, and also how to get them to become new students once they get there. (more…)

One of the most common lesson openers we hear as music teachers is the famous line, “I didn’t get to practice much this week…”. It is essential that our students practice if they are to improve in their abilities. But getting them to practice can sometimes be a chore.

How often do your students practice? Is that something you measure or have your students track? How helpful would it be if you could know exactly when your students are practicing, for how long, and what they’ve been working on, even before they come to their lesson? What if you could provide some incentive for your students to practice more?

Music Teacher’s Helper now has a fun way to help your students track their practicing on-line through your studio website. Every student can record when they practiced, for how long, and (more…)

Summer is a great time to market your studio. The studio is typically less busy, with students away on extended vacations and camps, and you have time to re-evaluate your previous marketing strategies and actively find ways to reach your target audience for the upcoming school year.
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Students need to hear and determine pitches and note intervals. On the guitar, I always use an exercise to help the student learn which string to play.

I turn my guitar toward me, and, starting with the first open string, I play it as I say “1st string” and have the student play and repeat the same. I do this, in order, for all six strings.

Next I play the first string and the student has to determine what string I played and play the same string. I usually play the strings in this order: 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 before playing random strings. If the student plays the wrong string, I keep playing the string until they play the correct string. I then play adjacent strings, bouncing back to the string that was played incorrectly, before continuing the exercise.

This training has improved the students’ ear as well as helping me differentiate between students with a good ear and students with a poor ear.

This exercise can be done with any instrument, including the voice. You will be surprised how many students, no matter what their age is, get a perfect score.

At a recent music festival, it was remarkable that one particular booth always had musicians sitting and jamming. A closer look revealed the answer: hand-carved wooden stools.

I was amazed when I sat in one. They seemed simple enough: three legs, no back, and a curved seat to fit all. But they were comfortable! No wonder people sat down and didn’t get up. Musicians just sat and played and a few others sat and listened.

The maker of these stools, Paul Baines, explained that the angles of the carved seat were made to avoid pressures on the legs and to keep the back at a comfortable angle, avoiding any need for a chair back. Baines explained that it is designed based on bone structure, and works regardless of how much or how little weight is carried on the bones–in other words this simple stool seems to be comfortable for people of all sizes. (Several people have asked for information about this stool–here’s a link.)

Musicians often have to sit for long periods of time, and back complaints or injuries are common, especially among pianists and cellists. Investing in a good chair is well worth the money and time. Here’s a link to an article that summarizes a lot of information out there on this subject. For example, the article points out that we are most comfortable when the thigh is at a 60 degree downward angle to the floor, not parallel. And if we slouch to “relax”, we curve our spine backwards from the natural curve, weakening it and possibly causing lower back pain.

Though the stools were not cheap, and we were not expecting extra expenses at that time, we found the stools so helpful that we bought two. My wife uses one at work and feels much better, without the aches and pains she was getting from a fancy rolling armed executive chair. We are thinking of adding one a year to our collection (they stack) and putting them out in our living room for some great music sessions.