Metronome School of Music. Counted at 72 beats per minute.
Four programmes, one shape: a weekly lesson, a written practice card, and something to play for other people before the term ends. Sample Term lengths, fees and staff details are placeholders.
3/1: octave and a fifth
The first two years on any instrument. Posture and hand shape, a steady pulse counted out loud, reading from the first month, and one piece the student picked themselves so there is always a reason to sit down.
Lessons run 45 minutes. Practice starts at ten minutes a day and grows when the student, not the parent, asks for more.
For students who can already read and hold a tempo. The work is building a set: three or four pieces kept playable at once, one of them from memory, all of them ready for the termly play-through.
Grade exams are prepared here for anyone who wants one. They are never the reason a piece is chosen.
Saturday morning strings and a mixed group that takes anyone with two terms behind them. Counting for other people is a different skill from counting for yourself, and it is the fastest cure for a wandering tempo.
Members must also take a weekly instrumental lesson, here or elsewhere. We are glad to work alongside another teacher.
Evening lessons for people who stopped at eleven, or never started. Nobody is asked to catch up with anybody. The first term is usually spent unlearning tension and finding out what you actually want to play.
Two evening slots a week are kept for this programme so lessons finish before 20:00.
3/1: octave and a fifth
3/1: octave and a fifth
Sample Placeholder staff. Replace the brackets with real names, training and years, and say plainly which instruments each person takes.
Piano, head of keyboard
[set training and years teaching]. Takes Foundations and Repertoire on piano, writes the practice cards everyone else copies, and plays the accompaniments at every play-through.
Violin, viola, ensemble
[set training and years teaching]. Runs Saturday strings, sizes every loan instrument, and will tell you honestly when a rental has outgrown its player.
Voice, guitar, theory
[set training and years teaching]. Teaches the evening adult returners, the theory group, and both guitar streams. Keeps the whiteboard covered in staves.
3/1: octave and a fifth
Piano and theory students bring nothing. String and guitar students can borrow from the cupboard for the whole first term.
step one
A song, a composer, a film score, a hymn. Anything. It tells the teacher more than a grade certificate does.
step two
How many days a week can you really practise. The practice card is written from that number, not from an ideal one.
step three
3/1: octave and a fifth
The week has free chairs in it.
Pick a slot from the timetable and the reservation form arrives already knowing which one you meant.