Lessons:
I teach private lessons at my home in Montclair, NJ. I teach saxophone, flute and clarinet and I teach jazz improvisation to any instrumentalist. Most of my students are children, teens or young adults, but I have had many adult students as well. I try to tailor the lessons to strike a good balance between a students interests and covering the fundamentals. I’m glad to help a student with their school ensemble music, but also assign scales, exercises and repertoire specifically for the lesson work.
I highly recommend weekly lessons. My experiences of attempting to give students fewer lessons (i.e. bi-weekly) have had less than ideal results. I give lessons in half-hour, 45 minute and hour-long increments. My rates are listed below.
Guidelines:
Below are some guidelines that I hope allow for the best possible results for my private students. The more I learn about teaching, the more I realize how little I know. Everybody learns differently and hard and fast rules are largely useless in the realm of musical development. However, I have found that these simple guidelines do tend to foster the best results.
Cancellations: Please keep cancellations to a minimum. If you must cancel please give 48 hours notice so that I have a chance to rearrange my schedule. I’m extremely flexible when I have open slots to accommodate you, if I’m given enough time to sort things out. You will be charged in full for lessons cancelled with less than 24 hours notice. Please stay on top of vacations, soccer schedules, and other conflicts so that we can avoid having to enforce this policy. However, I do not charge for lessons canceled due to sickness, if the student has stayed home from school or left early because of illness. Please don’t bring a sick child to his/her lesson!
No-shows: Please understand that I cannot reschedule a lesson once the lesson time has arrived. This is an automatic late cancellation charge.
Practicing: The most valuable thing that music lessons can teach is time management and self discipline. Short daily practice sessions do miracles for a childs improvement. We hope that daily practice is encouraged by the parents. I don’t consider it part of my job to be mean enough to “scare” your child into practicing. For almost all students under 14, their practice habits are largely a function of their parents willingness to demand regular practice and give reminders and incentives to practice. I’m often asked by other parents how I get my own children to practice, and I ask how they their kids to do their math homework. In other words, I think there is usually a direct correlation between how much a child practices and how much the parents value music practice. To sum up, please encourage your child to practice early in the practice week. Cramming for lessons usually doesn’t work. And never cancel a lesson because your child hasn’t practiced, at best that just leads to a week of very unfocused practicing.
Payments: My current rates are $35 for 1/2 hour lessons, $48 for 45 minutes and $60 for one hour. Please pay for each lesson at the lesson. If you want to pay for lessons in advance, monthly or packages of 10 lessons are fine. But please do not get behind. Personal checks are fine, but cash is greatly appreciated!
Music bag: Please have a designated music bag with all your child’s lesson music, manuscript notebook, metronome, study books and anything else that I’ve requested he/she bring to the lesson.
Don’t hesitate to call or email me if you have questions about your child’s progress, instrument, assignment or any other concern. I’m always interested in improving the quality of our lessons.
