Private music lessons offer a variety of benefits for everyone! Students of all backgrounds, experience levels, and ages, from young beginners up to even a professional level, benefit from the care and dedication of one-on-one education. If you’re unsure whether group lessons or private might be better, here are some of the benefits of individualized instruction:
Take the Time You Need
Every person learns at their own pace. Lessons aren’t just about gaining information but about retaining it and putting it into practice. With private lessons, you can spend as much time as you need on a specific concept to make sure that you are making sustainable growth as a musician! If you need to revisit a skill, you can revisit it! If you need a little extra time for a particularly challenging idea, you can have as much time as you need. Our aim is to teach lessons that will stick with you and help you, not to push you through a curriculum faster than you’re capable of.
Learn to Play Your Instrument
Learning an instrument is not just about listening but about doing! The physical skills necessary for making music can be tricky and, like most physical skills, require repetitive practice to master. The process of learning any instrument, including the voice, is a physical experience unique to each body, maturity, physiological makeup, and more. Private lessons allow a student to focus on mastering the technical aspects of an instrument in a way that is authentic and tailored to their individual physiological needs, strengths, and challenges, allowing for faster, more natural, and often more enjoyable growth and learning!
Focus on What You Want
Whether you’re in lessons for your own self-improvement, are working towards a performance, have an upcoming audition, or any other reason, private lessons offer the opportunity to focus intently on what you want so that you reach — And exceed! — all your ambitions. A private teacher can serve not only as an instructor but as a mentor, and their expertise as musicians, performers, and professionals is invaluable for helping support and achieve your goals.
Keep Your Motivation at Maximum
Private lessons offer you the opportunity to pick what you want to play! Learning is not a linear process. Sometimes, it can feel hard and frustrating. One of the best ways to reinspire motivation is to choose a new song that you’re really excited about or to dip into a genre that you’re interested in. Teachers want to help students work on songs they’re interested in and many fundamental theories and concepts are able to be carried through even if you switch songs.
Getting the Most Out of Your Lessons
If you decide that private lessons are right for you, here are some important tips and tricks to maximize your learning:
1. Communicate with Your Teacher – There is no one more knowledgeable and in tune with what’s going on in lessons than the teacher. Talking to your teacher and making sure that your expectations for lessons and your goals are clear is the number one way to make sure that your lessons are best serving you.
2. Practice Regularly – The time spent outside of lessons is almost as important as the time you spend in lessons. Take the time to learn in class and then use your time between lessons to master those fundamentals and skills.
3. Track Your Progress – At Expressions, we use our in-house motivational and progress tracking program called Level Up. It provides structured challenges, which can be customized to fit each student, as well as fun practice tracking with sticker puzzles! Read more about our Level Up program here.
4. Find Performance Opportunities – Don’t forget that one of the benefits of lessons at Expression is twice-yearly recital opportunities totally FREE for all enrolled students!