Thomas J. West Music

There is no question that trained musicians who offer private lessons deserve to be compensated fairly for the time and effort they put in to teaching private lesson students. There is also no question that in the current global economic slump, less people can afford to pay for private lessons at $40 or more an hour.

I have been teaching privately in person and online since I hung up my marching band director's hat in 2008. I have definitely noticed that the majority of families who want band and orchestra lessons have either beginner or intermediate level students and come from upper middle income or higher famimiles. I have had more than one student who had a nanny and had maid service going on when I visited.

There are also far many more students out there looking for guitar lessons than any other instrument, with piano, drum set,  and voice being the second most popular.  Band and orchestra continues to be "that thing that kids get involved in during high school" while pop music instruments continue to be the dominant force in American culture.

I offer lessons in all of these instruments at the beginner and intermediate level and will coach performers at the advanced level. I have enough direct experience with all of them to get someone started with good habits and point them in the right direction. There is no question in my mind that at this juncture, I need to invest some time in becoming more proficient at guitar to be able to tap into that large pool of students. I currently am working with beginner guitar students as part of the Remote Access program at my cyber charter school. I am guiding them through the Alfred Basic Guitar series in assignments where they record exercises from our unit of study to send to me and then play for me "live" on webcam.

Seeing what the market is willing to pay for is an interesting indicator of our economy and culture.

This article (c) 2012 Thomas J. West. All content on ThomasJWestMusic dot com is licensed under a Creative Contributions Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Please contact the author before publishing on or off-line.

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