I lived in Georgia USA in 2006 and paid $22 US for half an hour. The instructor was very well-qualified [principal violist with a symphony] so it was a bit higher than other teachers in that area.
No doubt her fee is higher now, since that was 4 years ago....but $50 for 30 minutes is very steep in my opinion.
Much could depend on who's doing the teaching and the seriousness of the student , but $50 for a half hour lesson is twice what the music store I work in charges. But I'm near Boston where there are legions of musicians looking to teach to make money.
I know a fellow who just started lessons in a piano store and when he asked about rates was told lessons were a dollar a minute. That's not a bad gauge.
Ok, so I guess between 20 and 30 of either Dollars, Euro, or Sterling seems to be about the going rate for a half hour lesson. Thanks folks.
On a related note, which is more common - a half hour lesson or a full hour? Which do you prefer? How about 40-45 min lessons? What kind of duration would ye see as best for the student?
For a beginner I would recommend no more than 30 minutes once a week; and if the beginner is a child than perhaps 20 minutes twice a week. The reasoning behind this is that a beginner has a lot of physical, neurological and mental (i.e. concentration and memory) stuff to acquire, and little and often is thus always best.
At a more advanced stage then a full hour would be about right, but that would imply a lot more intensive practice by the pupil between lessons, so in that case fortnightly lessons would be appropriate - and note that a lesson isn't the time for practicing!.
Fees. Depends on many factors. When I had piano lessons in my youth my teacher (who ran a full time private music school with several teachers) linked the hourly rate to the pupil's grade, so a beginner/intermediate would pay about 2/3 - 3/4 of the top rate which would start when the pupil reached grade 5.
Today, I have the impression that the hourly rate in the UK (outside London perhaps) is probably in the range of about £20-30 over a course of lessons. But an advanced player who wanted a couple of one-off lessons from a busy top performer (not always a good idea because it might just be for vanity, and a top performer may not necessarily be a top teacher) would expect to pay considerably more.
Some music shops in the larger cities, such as Bristol, hold lists of local teachers - which is how I found my current violin teacher.
Btw, there is something to be said for choosing a teacher whom you dont' know, except by reputation and recommendation, and who doesn't know you. This takes personal bias out of the equation at the outset.
I see that member mandolinist pays £20 for a 35 minute lesson at school. That does indeed seem a bit high but I think the explanation may lie in an agreement with the unions set up by the local education authority (LEA). If the teacher is a peripatetic, then travel costs and other overheads such as insurance would doubtless be part of the agreement.
Schools today have to be run as businesses - i.e not at a financial loss. If musical instrument teaching is offered as an extra-curricular subject on the premises then presumably the school would charge for the hire and use of a room for the teaching - another item that would increase the cost over equivalent private tuition.
Funny you should ask. I just changed from 30 minutes every week to an hour every other week last month.
I prefer a half hour each week as I love going to my lessons. We have so much fun playing. However, I like going every other week for an hour as I feel like I get a lot more accomplished and feel more relaxed and not hurried.
A half hour lesson goes so fast. Also having two weeks to practice the difficult pieces works best for me.
I charge $25 USD for a half hour lesson and $35 for an hour. A number of music business people are pushing me to raise the hourly rate to $40 or $45. I also teach a 2.5 hour Irish music workshop every Monday and charge only $10 per person. As long as enough people show up, it's worth my while.
I teach 5 days a week and at these rates (which are higher than most of the other local teachers'), my schedule is full.
Many students take a lesson (either half hour or full hour) every week, but a fair number do an hour every other week. That choice seem mostly to be a matter of whether you need a weekly lesson to stay motivated, or whether you're so busy that you need two weeks to integrate the material between lessons. I also have a handful of students who travel 100 miles or more to take lessons--they typically do one lesson a month.
Your choice of instrument also factors into the best length of lesson. I can cover a lot of ground and move people forward just fine in half an hour on guitar, mandolin, banjo, or bass guitar. But nearly all of my fiddle students prefer hour lessons.
P.S. Here in the States, a self-employed teacher has to factor in state and federal income taxes and Social Security payments. Look at my rates, and then deduct 37% to see what my take home pay is. Subtract another 15% for studio rent and supplies (web site, printer ink, paper, etc., not to mention the "durable goods" such as books, recording equipment, etc.) and at best I'm making less than half of what I charge.
Hey Miss L, what kind of music do you mostly teach to your students? the reason I ask is I started up doing lessons a couple of years ago. I gave it up because I couldn't seem to get any serious students, but I live in a college town where lessons are easy to come by, most students have no problem finding teachers.
I pay $40 per hour. When I first started, I found an hour to be very long, especially as I found the fiddle very difficult and I was very tense. Now, after a couple of years, an hour is perfect. It goes quickly and is lots of fun. It's money well spent.
Earl, I'd love to just teach Irish fiddle, but I end up teaching five instruments and every style of music except jazz and classical. I teach fiddle, mandolin, banjo, guitar, and bass guitar. In the course of an average day I range from Taylor Swift to Paddy Glackin to Earl Scruggs to Slayer, with dashes of Leo Kottke, Aerosmith, Eric Clapton, and Mother Maybelle Carter thrown in. Last Friday I started off teaching a Missouri fiddle tune on 5-string banjo, then filled a request to teach Superfreak on guitar as an exercise in transposing up and down the guitar neck. The next lesson was helping another guitarist work up Green Day's 21 Guns, and then came a fiddle lesson on slip jigs. And so on.
I couldn't make a living at it without teaching guitar, but the older I get, the more my left hand complains on that neck. Not sure what the future holds. I lost my part-time university faculty job last year (teaching natural resource policy) thanks to the economic downturn, so this is it for now. May go back to free-lance writing more....
Rates seem to vary a lot depending on the size of city you live in, and how the local economy rates against others. Here in Montana, few folks make enough to afford the higher rates. It's not unusually for accomplished, well qualified teachers to charge $15 a lesson, fro anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes.
That's sad, in my opinion. The skills and insights needed to play and teach music well are worth more than that, and by asking more, you'll draw students who genuinely value your mentoring.
@MsLonelyhearts You included books, materials, etc on list of expenses. This does come out of pocket, but I beleive those are tax deductable if it's part of your business, so isn't it possible to get that money back?
Tax deductible just means that I can deduct them from my total earning, thus reducing my taxable income. But I really don't spend much on that sort of overhead. (My wife's a CPA, so she's savvy on all the ways to reduce my tax burden. But I also believe in paying my fair share.)
At times in my working life, I've earned as much as $150 an hour (as a performer, and also as a writer). One one hand, that's shocking. On the other, it doesn't begin to compensate for the thousands of hours of studying and honing your craft.
Honestly, I just really enjoy teaching music. If I were independently wealthy, I would still teach music just for fun.
Not having a go at anyone, merely offering a different perspective, but I was brought up with the idea of trad as one of the ties that binds the local community together. That teaching a tune is like minding the neighbor's children, changing the cooking gas cylinder for the elderly couple down the lane, or lending a tractor in August. Why charge for one but not the other? My father says that if he's not friends with his students before he starts teaching them then they are by the end, and how could you take money from a friend? It's not as though it's work!
I teach 8 hours a week, my parents both teach as did their parents and I can't recall any of them ever taking a penny for trad lessons (though my mother has always charged for classical piano). I know lots of trad musicians that are the same way and very many more that charge only enough to cover expenses. I also know some that make their living from teaching and to be clear, I've nothing against anyone charging for lessons, good luck to them. But it's not for me.
I teach button key, one on one, I charge €10 per hour. It just about pays for the heating (I hope) I also charge the same for drum tuition. I get great satisfaction out of watching somebody in their fifties with a lifelong ambition of been able to knock a tune out of a box, doing just that. I recently started teaching the box to a young teenage lad who suffers from ADHD. Could be fighting a losing battle on this one.............!
Good man, Free Reed ! I bought an old C#/D accordeon from Charlie Harris some years ago but never got round to learning it. If you ever organise online Skype lessons, I´ll be your next student !
PJ, I completely agree with and respect your perspective. I would teach trad for free if I didn't have mouths to feed. That said, out of about 60 students a week, only a handful are learning Irish trad. (I live in a small town in Montana USA--rock and country are far more popular.)
Over the years, while earning a living as a writer, I've passed along this music to hundreds of people for no charge. I couldn't count the hours I've spent teaching tunes and technique and passing along the sense of community that comes from getting your tunes from real people and hearing their stories about who they got the tunes from. And never asked for a cent.
Funny, but when I hosted a tune-learning session for free, it died out due to lack of participation. Now that I charge $10 a head, people show up every week. Go figure.
Yeah, $50 per 1/2 hour is a rip. Shop around for another teacher or consider sharing lessons with another student. I live in NYC and some of the best teachers charge $50 per hour. Seriously.
That's a good point--I have several students who pair up for lessons, so they each just pay half the normal rate. Obviously, this only works if they're at about the same ability and progress similarly (and typically on the same instrument).
I pay $25 for half hour lessons, and feel like I'm getting away with murder every time I pay my teacher. Honestly, it boggles my mind that I can put a roof over my head and food on the table while still getting to learn to play this stuff.
I'd say it depends on who is doing the teaching, what level they're teaching at and are they teaching something that no one else teaches.
Working with a top level teacher will cost more than working with an every day teacher. I know teachers, for example, who charge several hundred euro per hour - and are worth every penny. I also know teachers who charge 30 euro per hour and aren't worth a cent of it.
I think it's probably better to focus on 'how much am I paying per result in my playing' rather than 'how much does a minute with the teacher cost me'.
At the end of the day, if you're getting good results then the lesson is worth whatever you're prepared to pay.
Music lesson rates
Music lesson rates
A cousin from America just told me she's paying $50 per half hour for her kid's music class. That sounded a bit steep to me.
Would that be considered a normal rate in the States? Anybody know what's the going rate in Ireland or England?
# Posted on February 16th 2010 by tradshark
Re: Music lesson rates
I lived in Georgia USA in 2006 and paid $22 US for half an hour. The instructor was very well-qualified [principal violist with a symphony] so it was a bit higher than other teachers in that area.
No doubt her fee is higher now, since that was 4 years ago....but $50 for 30 minutes is very steep in my opinion.
# Posted on February 16th 2010 by baylady
Re: Music lesson rates
i live in england and get fiddle lessons through school. they are £20 per session which is about 35mins
# Posted on February 16th 2010 by mandolinist
Re: Music lesson rates
Much could depend on who's doing the teaching and the seriousness of the student , but $50 for a half hour lesson is twice what the music store I work in charges. But I'm near Boston where there are legions of musicians looking to teach to make money.
I know a fellow who just started lessons in a piano store and when he asked about rates was told lessons were a dollar a minute. That's not a bad gauge.
# Posted on February 16th 2010 by Steve L
Re: Music lesson rates
I pay $50.00 for one hour.
Mary
# Posted on February 16th 2010 by Antikhntr
Re: Music lesson rates
Ok, so I guess between 20 and 30 of either Dollars, Euro, or Sterling seems to be about the going rate for a half hour lesson. Thanks folks.
On a related note, which is more common - a half hour lesson or a full hour? Which do you prefer? How about 40-45 min lessons? What kind of duration would ye see as best for the student?
# Posted on February 16th 2010 by tradshark
Re: Music lesson rates
For a beginner I would recommend no more than 30 minutes once a week; and if the beginner is a child than perhaps 20 minutes twice a week. The reasoning behind this is that a beginner has a lot of physical, neurological and mental (i.e. concentration and memory) stuff to acquire, and little and often is thus always best.
At a more advanced stage then a full hour would be about right, but that would imply a lot more intensive practice by the pupil between lessons, so in that case fortnightly lessons would be appropriate - and note that a lesson isn't the time for practicing!.
Fees. Depends on many factors. When I had piano lessons in my youth my teacher (who ran a full time private music school with several teachers) linked the hourly rate to the pupil's grade, so a beginner/intermediate would pay about 2/3 - 3/4 of the top rate which would start when the pupil reached grade 5.
Today, I have the impression that the hourly rate in the UK (outside London perhaps) is probably in the range of about £20-30 over a course of lessons. But an advanced player who wanted a couple of one-off lessons from a busy top performer (not always a good idea because it might just be for vanity, and a top performer may not necessarily be a top teacher) would expect to pay considerably more.
Some music shops in the larger cities, such as Bristol, hold lists of local teachers - which is how I found my current violin teacher.
Btw, there is something to be said for choosing a teacher whom you dont' know, except by reputation and recommendation, and who doesn't know you. This takes personal bias out of the equation at the outset.
# Posted on February 16th 2010 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Music lesson rates
I see that member mandolinist pays £20 for a 35 minute lesson at school. That does indeed seem a bit high but I think the explanation may lie in an agreement with the unions set up by the local education authority (LEA). If the teacher is a peripatetic, then travel costs and other overheads such as insurance would doubtless be part of the agreement.
# Posted on February 16th 2010 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Music lesson rates
Schools today have to be run as businesses - i.e not at a financial loss. If musical instrument teaching is offered as an extra-curricular subject on the premises then presumably the school would charge for the hire and use of a room for the teaching - another item that would increase the cost over equivalent private tuition.
# Posted on February 16th 2010 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Music lesson rates
Funny you should ask. I just changed from 30 minutes every week to an hour every other week last month.
I prefer a half hour each week as I love going to my lessons. We have so much fun playing. However, I like going every other week for an hour as I feel like I get a lot more accomplished and feel more relaxed and not hurried.
A half hour lesson goes so fast. Also having two weeks to practice the difficult pieces works best for me.
Mary
# Posted on February 16th 2010 by Antikhntr
Re: Music lesson rates
I think it is £2 a night at our local CCE. It used to be £1.
- Chris
# Posted on February 16th 2010 by ramblingpitchfork
Re: Music lesson rates
I charge $25 USD for a half hour lesson and $35 for an hour. A number of music business people are pushing me to raise the hourly rate to $40 or $45. I also teach a 2.5 hour Irish music workshop every Monday and charge only $10 per person. As long as enough people show up, it's worth my while.
I teach 5 days a week and at these rates (which are higher than most of the other local teachers'), my schedule is full.
Many students take a lesson (either half hour or full hour) every week, but a fair number do an hour every other week. That choice seem mostly to be a matter of whether you need a weekly lesson to stay motivated, or whether you're so busy that you need two weeks to integrate the material between lessons. I also have a handful of students who travel 100 miles or more to take lessons--they typically do one lesson a month.
Your choice of instrument also factors into the best length of lesson. I can cover a lot of ground and move people forward just fine in half an hour on guitar, mandolin, banjo, or bass guitar. But nearly all of my fiddle students prefer hour lessons.
# Posted on February 16th 2010 by Will Harmon
Re: Music lesson rates
P.S. Here in the States, a self-employed teacher has to factor in state and federal income taxes and Social Security payments. Look at my rates, and then deduct 37% to see what my take home pay is. Subtract another 15% for studio rent and supplies (web site, printer ink, paper, etc., not to mention the "durable goods" such as books, recording equipment, etc.) and at best I'm making less than half of what I charge.
# Posted on February 16th 2010 by Will Harmon
Re: Music lesson rates
Going rate where I am in the US is $25/half-hour, $40/hour - and that is with the "best" teachers.
# Posted on February 16th 2010 by worthy
Re: Music lesson rates
Hey Miss L, what kind of music do you mostly teach to your students? the reason I ask is I started up doing lessons a couple of years ago. I gave it up because I couldn't seem to get any serious students, but I live in a college town where lessons are easy to come by, most students have no problem finding teachers.
# Posted on February 16th 2010 by Earl Cameron
Re: Music lesson rates
I pay $40 per hour. When I first started, I found an hour to be very long, especially as I found the fiddle very difficult and I was very tense. Now, after a couple of years, an hour is perfect. It goes quickly and is lots of fun. It's money well spent.
# Posted on February 16th 2010 by boxielady
Re: Music lesson rates
Earl, I'd love to just teach Irish fiddle, but I end up teaching five instruments and every style of music except jazz and classical. I teach fiddle, mandolin, banjo, guitar, and bass guitar. In the course of an average day I range from Taylor Swift to Paddy Glackin to Earl Scruggs to Slayer, with dashes of Leo Kottke, Aerosmith, Eric Clapton, and Mother Maybelle Carter thrown in. Last Friday I started off teaching a Missouri fiddle tune on 5-string banjo, then filled a request to teach Superfreak on guitar as an exercise in transposing up and down the guitar neck. The next lesson was helping another guitarist work up Green Day's 21 Guns, and then came a fiddle lesson on slip jigs. And so on.
I couldn't make a living at it without teaching guitar, but the older I get, the more my left hand complains on that neck. Not sure what the future holds. I lost my part-time university faculty job last year (teaching natural resource policy) thanks to the economic downturn, so this is it for now. May go back to free-lance writing more....
# Posted on February 17th 2010 by Will Harmon
Re: Music lesson rates
I teach piano and classical double bass, and charge $40 for a 45 minute lesson in the home.
# Posted on February 17th 2010 by Greg the Piano Tuner
Re: Music lesson rates
Rates seem to vary a lot depending on the size of city you live in, and how the local economy rates against others. Here in Montana, few folks make enough to afford the higher rates. It's not unusually for accomplished, well qualified teachers to charge $15 a lesson, fro anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes.
That's sad, in my opinion. The skills and insights needed to play and teach music well are worth more than that, and by asking more, you'll draw students who genuinely value your mentoring.
# Posted on February 17th 2010 by Will Harmon
Re: Music lesson rates
@MsLonelyhearts You included books, materials, etc on list of expenses. This does come out of pocket, but I beleive those are tax deductable if it's part of your business, so isn't it possible to get that money back?
# Posted on February 17th 2010 by banshee misfortune
Re: Music lesson rates
Tax deductible doesn't mean that you get the money back. You just don't pay tax on them.
# Posted on February 17th 2010 by ethical blend
Re: Music lesson rates
Tax deductible just means that I can deduct them from my total earning, thus reducing my taxable income. But I really don't spend much on that sort of overhead. (My wife's a CPA, so she's savvy on all the ways to reduce my tax burden. But I also believe in paying my fair share.)
At times in my working life, I've earned as much as $150 an hour (as a performer, and also as a writer). One one hand, that's shocking. On the other, it doesn't begin to compensate for the thousands of hours of studying and honing your craft.
Honestly, I just really enjoy teaching music. If I were independently wealthy, I would still teach music just for fun.
# Posted on February 17th 2010 by Will Harmon
Re: Music lesson rates
Not having a go at anyone, merely offering a different perspective, but I was brought up with the idea of trad as one of the ties that binds the local community together. That teaching a tune is like minding the neighbor's children, changing the cooking gas cylinder for the elderly couple down the lane, or lending a tractor in August. Why charge for one but not the other? My father says that if he's not friends with his students before he starts teaching them then they are by the end, and how could you take money from a friend? It's not as though it's work!
I teach 8 hours a week, my parents both teach as did their parents and I can't recall any of them ever taking a penny for trad lessons (though my mother has always charged for classical piano). I know lots of trad musicians that are the same way and very many more that charge only enough to cover expenses. I also know some that make their living from teaching and to be clear, I've nothing against anyone charging for lessons, good luck to them. But it's not for me.
# Posted on February 17th 2010 by Sweeney Astray
Re: Music lesson rates
My lesson used to last an hour for twenty minutes, then we'd have a cup of tea
# Posted on February 17th 2010 by premier
Re: Music lesson rates
Really it depends if giving lessons is how you make your living, or if you have another source of income.
# Posted on February 17th 2010 by minijackpot
Re: Music lesson rates
I teach button key, one on one, I charge €10 per hour. It just about pays for the heating (I hope) I also charge the same for drum tuition. I get great satisfaction out of watching somebody in their fifties with a lifelong ambition of been able to knock a tune out of a box, doing just that. I recently started teaching the box to a young teenage lad who suffers from ADHD. Could be fighting a losing battle on this one.............!
# Posted on February 17th 2010 by Free Reed
Re: Music lesson rates
Good man, Free Reed ! I bought an old C#/D accordeon from Charlie Harris some years ago but never got round to learning it. If you ever organise online Skype lessons, I´ll be your next student !
# Posted on February 17th 2010 by murfbox
Re: Music lesson rates
PJ, I completely agree with and respect your perspective. I would teach trad for free if I didn't have mouths to feed. That said, out of about 60 students a week, only a handful are learning Irish trad. (I live in a small town in Montana USA--rock and country are far more popular.)
Over the years, while earning a living as a writer, I've passed along this music to hundreds of people for no charge. I couldn't count the hours I've spent teaching tunes and technique and passing along the sense of community that comes from getting your tunes from real people and hearing their stories about who they got the tunes from. And never asked for a cent.
Funny, but when I hosted a tune-learning session for free, it died out due to lack of participation. Now that I charge $10 a head, people show up every week. Go figure.
# Posted on February 18th 2010 by Will Harmon
Re: Music lesson rates
Yeah, $50 per 1/2 hour is a rip. Shop around for another teacher or consider sharing lessons with another student. I live in NYC and some of the best teachers charge $50 per hour. Seriously.
# Posted on February 19th 2010 by The Session
Re: Music lesson rates
That's a good point--I have several students who pair up for lessons, so they each just pay half the normal rate. Obviously, this only works if they're at about the same ability and progress similarly (and typically on the same instrument).
# Posted on February 19th 2010 by Will Harmon
Re: Music lesson rates
I pay $25 for half hour lessons, and feel like I'm getting away with murder every time I pay my teacher. Honestly, it boggles my mind that I can put a roof over my head and food on the table while still getting to learn to play this stuff.
# Posted on February 19th 2010 by Tall, Dark, and Mysterious
Re: Music lesson rates
I'd say it depends on who is doing the teaching, what level they're teaching at and are they teaching something that no one else teaches.
Working with a top level teacher will cost more than working with an every day teacher. I know teachers, for example, who charge several hundred euro per hour - and are worth every penny. I also know teachers who charge 30 euro per hour and aren't worth a cent of it.
I think it's probably better to focus on 'how much am I paying per result in my playing' rather than 'how much does a minute with the teacher cost me'.
At the end of the day, if you're getting good results then the lesson is worth whatever you're prepared to pay.
# Posted on February 23rd 2010 by rosfrog
Re: Music lesson rates
I pay 20euro for 40 mins (approx)
# Posted on March 3rd 2010 by Dec Flynn