This is a topic that I've wanted to talk about for some time now! I'm always getting questions for students, who are curious about what my day-to-day looks like beyond their lessons, so I thought I'd chat here a bit about what it all looks like! Starting with...
1. Music Teaching
The most well-known part of my business is, of course, the teaching side! So, what does this involve? Well, before we get to the lesson delivery itself, we've got to...
With new students, I'm keen to learn about their history with music and the piano/organ, what their tastes in music are, and what their goals with the instrument are. For some, that's a pathway to a professional career in music, either in performance, teaching, composition, and so on. For others, it's just purely for the fun of it, maybe to learn a favourite set of tunes, or just to be able to improvise at the piano. But of course, it all needs to be fun, otherwise what's the point!
Once I've got that, I set about creating a personalised plan for their musical journey, with plenty of wiggle room and optional diversions for them to explore. Within that are some core, unchangeable elements, such as:
Healthy, sustainable technique
Practice methodologies
Mindfulness and balancing work/life/practice
(Ommm.....)
The lessons are designed to fit flexibly around the student, so I'll always open each lesson with a series of questions around how the student is doing, what their week/day has been like, how practice has been for them, and any successes or struggles they may have had in the course of their music making. That allows me to start more in-sync with the student and gives the student space to flag up anything to focus on, in addition to the overarching plan. There's a lot more that goes into the lessons themselves, but I'll save that for a future Musical Musings blog. I've also a number of GCSE and A-Level students who are studying music so we've tied that into their lessons too.
In with this goes the scheduling (I juggle the schedules of 60+ students and families, in 5 different time zones), resource and sheet music requests, report writing at the end of term, regular email updates and so on! It definitely keeps me busy, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
(replace the dog with a cat, and that's pretty accurate)
2. Performance
(quite a close resemblance, no?)
As a pianist and organist, I will spend some of my time performing! Sometimes this will be for an event, like a birthday, wedding, funeral, or a corporate get-together. If this is in the form of an event booking, I'll take details and then we'll have some time together to flesh out what music they'd like to request, timings, the layout of the venue and so forth, and then organise the time to practice the rep as needed. Sometimes these are 45 minutes to an hour. However, the longest event I've ever played was 6 hours long (!) for a charity fundraising gala. I slept well that night!
Other times, this will be a concert that I've organised and put together:
Sometimes I'll also find myself on the podium, baton in hand...
As an organist, I'll often find myself accompanying services, choirs, and also doing the occasional concert too.
3. Accompaniment
I accompany lots of people for instrumental exams all around the area (ABRSM, TCL, LCM, MTB etc) for all grades (inc. diplomas). That keeps me very busy in the exam seasons as often there will be a large bundle of exams coming through at once, but it's really great being part of that journey with students. My role as an accompanist is primarily to provide some backing to the soloists parts, but as part of the accompaniment service, I also:
Help candidates with performance anxiety, to help the soloist feel at ease
Give advice about performance directions and interpretations
Provide aural training as required for the exam
Provide technical support for clients doing digital exams.
This really requires me to be on top of my organisational side - anywhere from a handful to nearly 100 exam candidates can come through in a season. Thank goodness for digital spreadsheets. Can you believe, I once organised everything by hand, in a little paper diary?! Luckily Google Calendar now has a booking integration that makes life infinitely more straightforward.
4. Workshops
As my students will tell you, we do fairly regular workshops to give everyone a chance to socialise but also to perform, or showcase what they might be working on at the moment. This is a nice opportunity to see 'works-in-progress', which I think is really important as most people only ever see the finished, polished result.
I also do workshops for other reasons too! Sometimes I'll do workshops with choirs and ensembles to do team-building, music making and collaborative exercises with them.
And sometimes it'll be workshops with another group, such as WNO or Baby Proms as a form of musical outreach into the community.
5. Consultancy
Sometimes, when the need arises, I'll provide advisory services for other teachers, groups, and local music delivery organisations on the topic of pedagogical strategy, SEND education, business planning and strategy, and providing resources as needed to help other music makers and educators thrive.
6. Administration
So, when I'm not doing any of the above, I'm running the administrative engine of the business. This includes:
Updating the business accounts
Checking invoices, processing any cancellations or refunds
Replying to enquiries for new students
Marking theory papers
Networking with venues and local musicians
Event planning
Website maintenance, updating SEOs and coding
Continuing professional development (CPD)
Practicing for any concerts or exams I'm accompanying
Instrument maintenance
I truly believe I have one of the best jobs a person could have. I can't believe how lucky I am to get to do my dream job and make music all week long - and that I get to meet such amazing people along the way too!
I'm off to teach now, and I'm going to grab a coffee before I do! So, I hope that gives you a bit of an insight into what a week can look like for me, and if there's anything you'd like to find out more about, drop me a line! -
Myles