Matthew Rusk Student Entrepreneur in Residence

Covid has hit the music industry hard. The music teachers I work with often pursue portfolio careers in music, meaning that they combine working in function bands, performing in their own original projects, working as session musicians with teaching music to their students. Almost every part of that portfolio came to a halt during lockdown, with performances curtailed and creative projects put on hold until members could meet up again.

Teaching music has been fairly resilient, with teachers offering everything from Zoom Drum Lessons to Skype Guitar Lessons, keeping their students engaged with online learning resources. Teachers within the community itself has shown fantastic support to one another, producing articles and advice on how to move teaching online – for example, one music teacher provided an incredibly helpful breakdown of how to use Zoom to teach online lessons, comparing that to Skype and other similar platforms. It is of real testament to the wider community of music teachers that they are able to come together during times like this to support one another.

This month marks hopefully the start of returning back to teaching, with many music teachers across the country exploring how they can begin to hold in-person lessons again. The guitar teachers I have spoken with in recent weeks are really looking forward to teaching in-person again, everything from being able to crank the volume up on the amp to really feel the power of a power chord, to giving their students the opportunity to being to consider to perform again. After all how many bands that would have formed over the last 12 months simply haven’t as there has been very little opportunity to. Those guitar teachers who enjoy bringing musicians of a similar age together to practice and perform as a group can begin to hope that they will be able to start that process again later in 2021, all being well.

The restarting of guitar lessons is also met with a reflection that learning a musical instrument is certainly not a necessity of life. Indeed, the cost of lessons are a relatively expensive hobby and one that when economic times are hard are quickly cut from an individuals budget. It is certainly on music teachers minds the impact of lockdown on the economy as a whole, as that will determine whether there will be new guitar students coming through the door in the next few months, or whether as things open up actual people are reluctant to commit, for fear of another wave or from the economic impact making music lessons a luxury that is not possible at this time. Only time will tell and I am very hopeful for the music teachers that we will see a strong bounce back this year, returning to more normal times for all.

Posted under Music Teacher