£15 for half an hour!!

[knittedbreast]

Seriously? is that normal for guitar lessons for a 5 year old???

anyone here in the south East who can play guitar and would like to teach my son for less that that please?

urgh. why is everyhting so expensive??

Fairly standard price. OUr school charges £17.50 per 35 minute lesson and children start at year 3 in lots of instruments.

Music lessons are £17 per half hour in our part of greater London. Pretty much the same for whatever instrument it is.

Glad I don't live in London then. How much are driving lessons down there?

In our village, some of the children who want instrument lessons tend to start with a local teenager teaching them! They charge about £5 for half an hour. My daughter started piano in this way - she is now on grade 6 and teaching a couple of 7 year olds herself. Lessons are fun and cheap! A great way to start learning.

RobF - can i just ask why you are comparing driving lessons to music lessons? It is supply and demand, more people probably want driving lessons so the cost is less.

Someone who is self employed has to live. If they are a music teacher and have a few of these lessons a day (how many people want to learn guitar in a a village?) that's £45 before all the outgoings.

"RobF - can i just ask why you are comparing driving lessons to music lessons? It is supply and demand, more people probably want driving lessons so the cost is less."

That's the opposite of supply and demand. The more the demand is, the more people can charge for their services.

Are there any qualifications you need to have to become a guitar teacher, or can anyone do it?

DS's teacher charges £20 for half an hour or £30 for an hour.

OP - have a look on your local authority website f any group classes or arts organisaions that do group lessons. Our local authority has a music service and runs saturday morning classes.

I would wait until 7 for formal lessons, tbh.

FREE! learn with him using tutorials on the internet, once you have got the major chords its just fiddling about. He won't want to do the intricate stuff til he's got bigger hands.

my dd's piano lessons are £17.50 for half an hour. We are in North London.

and teach yourselves using youtube tutorials?

cats eh!

really? i suppose i could try. i guess with paid lessons i hoped they might be able to make it child friendly where i couldnt

Definitely get that contract sorted, knittedbreast. No less than the next Hendrix otherwise the deal's off.

And when your dc takes up the piano, I'd insist on ' Mozart' as the next Barry Manilow doesn't bear thinking about - all that plastic sugery and botox!

The guitar teacher we use for our son (plays electric) is £10 for half an hour.

I would also say that 5 is too young. 10/11 is much better.

yes about £15 sounds right.

That sounds spot on, tbh. I teach piano in South east and charge £14 a half hour, and I'm maybe a bit on the lower end due to not wanting to lose pupils in the current climate. I pay £30 per hour for both singing and drum lessons for the DDs.

Be grateful you don't skate - the lessons are £10 for each 15 minutes. You get nothing done in 15 minutes. Lots of parents pay for at least an hour a day . We cannot even begin to afford that!

At that age, though, I'd have thought 20 minutes was enough. Can you suggest that?

i had a look, i cant even tell if hes put his finger on a string to make that noise lol

i was joking izzywizzy!

i could try and suggest 20mins il see if i can negoiate

In Gloucestershire, I coach verbal reasoning for secondary school entrance exams and I charge £18.50 for half an hour. I have a degree and a post graduate teaching certificate and a very high pass rate, so I feel my fees are in line with my training and expertise. If my DC were getting music tuition I would expect it to be considerably less than this amount, unless they were studying with a very well thought of, highly qualified teacher at a very high level.

I meant to add - that my DH and I went to see a concert by Richard Durrant (The Guitar Whisperer - search for him on You Tube 'cos he's great) last week and he recommended that if we had children who wanted to play guitar that they were better off mucking about on a £20 Ukele until they were about 9 or 10 years old because of the finger size required for even a small guitar.

It's not really a rip off, if you think about it. There are far more overheads than you might realise and a good teacher will put work in behind the half hour you are paying for. If I work full time piano teaching I still earn much less than I did when I was a school teacher, once my associated costs are taken out. I do this because I enjoy it more. But I am a qualified teacher with a teaching degree and music diplomas, so I'm not going to charge only what I would earn in a minimum wage job. If I did, I'd have to go back into school teaching instead. Many teachers I know are in this position.

Overheads you might not have thought of - if he comes to you there's the petrol which will go through the roof with all that travelling.
If you go to him there will be the cost of heating a house which could otherwise not need it, wear and tear, and even things like toilet roll which add up like mad.
Plus, a good teacher will buy their own copies of the pupils' music - my music book bill is over £1000 a year as new books come out constantly and the exam music completely changes every 2 years which requires 8 grades of new music books, CDs etc. Then there's instrument upkeep. My piano costs me around £60 to tune every few weeks, I upgrade my keyboard every couple of years, etc, I need music stands, metronones etc, and I get through reams and reams of paper, pens, pencils and computer ink. A guitar teacher will have costs like this too. They will be slightly different, but there will be costs.

It feels like a rip off to you, but the guitar teacher has to earn his living too.

I agree with you musicposy - I have to pay to buy 'real' exam papers from the board - these cost £412 for four 50 min exam papers!!!!

"unless they were studying with a very well thought of, highly qualified teacher at a very high level."

You need a highly qualified, well thought of teacher at the beginner levels too, unless you want your child to have a lifetime of bad habits which they will constantly struggle to overcome. I teach from beginner to diploma. I don't charge my Grade 8 and diploma pupils more, because it's no easier to teach a beginner well - in fact it can be harder. Higher grades generally need longer lessons which does make it pricier for the parents, but I don't know of any music teachers who actually vary their hourly rate according to the level.

That is slightly lower than the standard rate for private lessons. A five year-old won't be able to concentrate for an hour (a ten year-old would find it difficult - music lessons are pretty intensive). Is there a music group locally? You know stories/play/tambourines/shaky musical type thingys/songs. My daughter went to a very good one locally - we're in London - before she started music lessons at school. It also ran summer workshops. She started violin at 6 with four in a group until she was about 8, and then had individual lessons.