inBachs / Accessibility of Private Lessons

"I have a lot of conflicting feelings on pricing. On one hand, as musicians, especially those of us with degrees, like we've put a lot of energy and time into our craft, regardless of degree. But then you add in the fact that I went and got an undergraduate performance degree and a master's performance degree. And yeah, like I want to be compensated, but I think there's a double-edged sword here in pricing for private music lessons.

Because on one hand, yes, we want to be compensated appropriately, and we should be, of course, obviously. This is something we've been advocating for years. But on the other hand, accessibility is a massive issue. There's an argument to be made that private music lessons are an extracurricular. They are above and beyond what is happening in the school day. We can make private music lessons accessible.

Just because it's an extracurricular, just because it's a special offering, does not mean that we have to intentionally price out people who would be a fantastic fit, like a really ideal student who are super driven and super enthusiastic and super engaged, and they want to be taking lessons with us, but they have extenuating circumstances. At the same time, because I've been in that situation, I don't want to put my students in that situation.

Just because we can doesn't mean we should. Just because we can price premium and hold to that does not mean that we always should. So it's one thing to say that what we're offering is a specialty service and that it has a lot of knowledge and capability and time that has gone into crafting it. All of that can be true, and we can also work on accessibility.

I want more musicians. I want students making music. And I want ideal students. I want students who are excited to be there and are going to practice and are going to make progress."