Kyle the Teacher?

That's a hard call, and it depends on your situation.

I would say if it's just a close friend who wants to expand her guitar knowledge, and there's a basic assumption that you'll retain the current status of your relationship, I'd probably recommend not charging, especialy since you started off that way.

If, on the other hand, this is someone you sort-of know, plan on teaching her long term, and there's no other strings in there, you might be able to pull it off.

Keep in mind that the issue of payment changes the relationship. As long as you're not charging, the relationship could be viewed purely as a friendship. When you start charging, that adds a whole new instructor element to the mix.

I recently started teaching a gal that I work with, and I chose not to charge her for 2 reasons:

1. She's a good friend of mine, I don't want to sacrifice anything in that relationship. I still want to be able to pal around with her.

2. She's one of my first few students, and I feel that it's still very much a learning process for me, so I wouldn't feel exactly right if I was charging her while I was essentially experimenting. I recognize that I'm always going to be learning, but right now my methods are very unrefined. I think they're on the right track: I'm organized, I have sheets and an overall organization, etc. but it has ways to go before it's really a full fledged system.

I'm pretty interested to see what NoteBoat has to say about this.

I started out teaching in a music store, so everybody got charged. I never really had a need to give lessons away, so I never have.

I'll donate lessons to charity auctions, and about 3-4 times a year my 15 year old's band will be rehearsing here and their guitarist will ask me for help with something - that's usually just a couple of minutes - but for everything else I get paid.

I guess it's ok to teach gratis for your first student or two, but if you want to end up teaching for a living, I can see that being really hard to do. Your first paying student may know one of your pro bono students... how will you deal with the "how come you charge me and not her"?

I had a friend last year ask me what I'd charge to teach her kids, and I told her. She said "That's kind of expensive, don't you think - I mean, we're friends, right"?

I just smiled at her and said "I'm really good".

If you're good enough to do it, if you take it seriously and get results, if you can help solve the stumbling blocks your students face - you should get paid, friend or not.

It sounds to me like Kyle's student has gotten an awful lot of material in one lesson. That's often a mistake. A student will make better long-term progress by perfecting (or nearly perfecting) each concept before moving on. Sure, there are folks who can absorb a ton of stuff, but other things get the short end of the stick - stuff like articulation, phrasing, dynamic control. Those are the things that separate someone who can play a melody from someone who can express a song, so I'd rather go a bit slower on the information and delve a bit more into the process of making it music... anybody can hit the right notes with practice; it takes something more to make the right notes hit ME! :)

Interesting topic. I recently started giving lessons in response to an ad from a complete beginner... I decided to charge a small fee (£5 for an hour lesson), on the grounds that, although my teaching experience is zero and my teaching potential is highly questionable, the lessons are at least reasonably formal and well-organized. Basically the money is just to make it worth my while trekking across town and back with my guitar once a week. If it works out well and I take on more students in the future then I would probably charge more. The trouble is I have only been playing two years so I can only really teach beginners at this point (but I do know what I am doing).

Anyway I have to say that progress feels a bit slow with this student and it makes me feel guilty about charging, if my lessons are not really sinking in... but she is very enthusiastic and keeps asking me back, so I can't really complain if she feels she is getting value for money.

Aside from that I think undercat's comments are about right when it comes to making a judgement call. If it was a good friend it'd be free; anyone else pays.

Right on. She is a good friend so I won't charge. Plus, when I took lessons from a friends dad who didn't charge, my mom made me buy him strings, so maybe I'll get the same treatment :lol: Anyway, part of the reason I gave her so much the first time was becuase after the next lesson, I won't be seeing her for 3 weeks over Feb. break, and I'm leaving a week early. So hopefully she has time to practice it all, but if not, hey, this is my first lesson. I'm learning. Also, I get so excited with people when they ask for me to teach them something on guitar that I will over do it and almost scare them off, so I hope that didn't happen with her. In any case I appreciate the input.

Kyle.

That must have been about a five hour lesson!

I say charge for the lessons. Time is money. Or maybe a trade - she could give you singing lessons.

I wouldn't charge her. Friendship and money is often a little tricky to mix. My uncle is a professional guitarist and also the head instructor at a guitarschool. He gives me lessons from time to time, but he never charges me. And I never charge him for fixing his computer. It's just not an issue, family and close friends help each other out :)

One last thing, is an hour and a half lesson too long? I don't plan to be really teaching too much stuff for more than an hour, but I was putting the extra 30 minutes aside for jamming at the end. Is this ok?

90 minutes is an awful long time... almost all of my students do 30 minutes.

The longest lesson I ever gave was last year, a 2-hour one, but that was a special situation: he'd played guitar for 40+ years, and was a former guitar teacher, but he hadn't really played in a while. It was more of a jam session. We did everything from jazz standards to Hendrix and Santana to CSNY. I didn't really 'teach' anything, although I did point out a couple things on some notes... I basically just laid down rhythms for him so he could work his fingers back into shape.

Other than that, I've got a classical student who takes occasional 60 minute lessons - she's working on celtic music, so she's coping with unfamiliar tunings - and some brother/sister, brother/brother, and mother/son combinations that take longer lessons because there's two of them to work with at once.

You can show plenty of stuff in 30 minutes, and I've found it's best to focus on no more than a few (2-3) major objectives in a lesson, or else the student's practice might be unfocused during the week.

Kyle,

For what it's worth. When I was married my wife had a dance studio with about a hundred or so students and all I could tell you is that most of the people that considered my wife a friend were the ones that didn't pay on time. Some would go months without paying before eventually settling up.

The saying is true don't go into business with friends/relatives and don't give your knowledge away for free. Granted you may be new at this so maybe charge her some introductory rate that will increase in say six months(you might do this for your first 10 students or so) as kind of a rewrd for signing up with you.

In any event you need to be firm about the money thing if you ever want to make a living at it.

Chris

Then again, maybe Kyle doesn't have a wife (and/or kids) or a mortage to pay. I teach guitar to a girl down here, and I am not going to charge no matter what people say. Some find the time to do free stuff for the community, church or whatever. Others give some time to helping others play music.

I understand this is all different if you are a professional teacher with paying students, like Noteboat and cnev, but if you are not a professional you'd really shouldn't mind too much if a friend just asks if you could teach him/her some stuff. That's why you are a friend, because you help them if you can, without sending a bill the next morning.

Charging a friend money. Talk about cultural differences... :?

I don't really see it as a cultural difference. I see it as a practical one...

If a friend asks me to help them move, no problem. I'll work my butt off, no invoice in the morning - they're asking a friend for one-time help. Friends help friends. On the other hand, if a friend wants guitar lessons, and they ask me to give them at no charge - well, they know that's what I do for a living, and they're asking for an ongoing commitment of my time. Would you ask a friend who owned a bakery if you could possibly have two loaves of bread free every week?

I do have one friend that I've taught with no exchange of money - she's a craft artist. My wife loves her handmade soaps. My friends gets lessons, my wife gets soap. She proposed the barter, and I immediately agreed. Barter can be a wonderful way to work out an exchange of talents without sullying a friendship with commerce. It also allows you to continue the friendship without either being disadvantaged - she values my teaching time with her soap making time.

I don't see a comparison between giving free time to the community or church and giving free lessons - on the one hand you work for greater good, on the other, you assist one individual. As I mentioned, I've donated lessons to charity auctions - that gives my time and helps the greater good, but the recipient of the lessons is also helping the greater good - last year one guy paid five times my going rate at auction! He's happy, I'm happy, the charity is happy. It's a way that I can give x% of my time without running into conflicts of playing favorities - who should I give free lessons to... the one who asked first? The one with the lowest income? What will I tell the others when I've 'run out' of free lessons?

One other rant while we're on the topic: in my great-grandfather's era, musicians were widely accepted as a profession. Every movie theater (silent movies, you know) had musicians; every restaurant; every tavern; every church dance. Technology has changed things, I know, and that killed a lot of the jobs. But when I started to play, there were a few open mics - other than that, every bar paid their musicians. On the low end of the stick, maybe they'd only pay $15 for the band, but they'd pay something. Through the 90s I watched the rise of 'showcase venues' that would have six acts instead of one, and not pay any (or only pay one) - because of the 'valuable exposure' they were giving. Now we're seeing pay-for-play clubs spring up.

If we, as musicians, are not willing to place an economic value on what we do, the world will agree that musicians should not be paid.

If your doing to help someone out (friend)then I wouldn't charge but like Note mentioned if this was something I wanted to do as a profession you need to start charging right away. Your time is worth something.

I saw first hand how things can go horribly wrong when your in a business like teaching music, dance etc.

I don't know how it's like teaching musical instruments, but my wife would have a lot of sisters and they'd each take one or two styles of lessons (tap, ballet etc) and when you have two or three children taking lessons a month the bill could get pretty steep and most of these were people who considered my wife a "friend" and really didn't feel the need to have to pay on time.

My only point is if it's a business you have to treat it like a business or you won't survive. If it's a hobby, anything goes.

Chris

I am sure that you can allow time to dictate your actions. If you continue to give her lessons on a semi-regular basis, if she continues to put the effort and practise in to repay your teaching efforts, then you can keep it free.

If the situation develops that she begins to expect the lessons regularly, or if she levels off and her enthusiasm wanes, i.e. she does not put the practise in between lessons, then you could perhaps reconsider the arrangement. Either the lessons stop, amicably because you've both gotten something out of the arrangement, or you discuss a rate.

Voluntary work, whether it helps one person or a thousand, is a noble pursuit. It lifts you above the petty opinions of those who think that everything in life needs to have a monetary value attached to it, and it some ways it can spiritually free you from the rat race - help you to realise that most things are much more important than money.

If you take up teaching as a profession, then the voluntary side can become a real chore, and it would be better for you to continue voluntary work, but in a totally different arena - it needs to be easily separable from work, for your own sanity!

For the short term though, while you are still both enjoying the arrangement, don't even think about it.

If we, as musicians, are not willing to place an economic value on what we do, the world will agree that musicians should not be paid.

I don't place an economic value on anything I do for a friend. If I would work in a bakery I'd do anything to get them as much free or cheap bread as legally possible. And if I knew a friend of mine would want to play guitar I'd offer to help them learn before they'd ask me. And I expect the exact same behaviour from my friends towards me.

Ofcourse, it should be accepted as a gift, and they should not expect free lessons every day or whatever. If they really want to claim your time whenever it suits them it is different, and they expect a service instead of an act of kindness. As such I see no problem with keeping it free if it is loosely organised.