Piano, flute, vocal, guitar, ukelele, theory, music therapy.

$55 for 1 hour per week
$45 for 45 minutes
$35 for 30 minutes 
(CAD)

All ages and levels. Young beginners, teenage experts and older lifelong learners all have different needs and learning trajectories. Music offers something for everyone and we can work with you to develop a programme that fits what you needs.

We try to cater to individual needs on a case by case basis. Online (around the world), in person or at home are all possible.

We have students from all around Canada and the globe for online lessons. All you need is a camera, a microphone and a decent internet. Online students can also participate in studio concerts.

Music lessons can serve many needs. It can be a a social activity, and emotional outlet and an intellectual journey of discovery. Music exams are a useful goal for people who need external validation, while others may be natural performers (and bad test-takers). Still other may simply enjoy working on problems for their own sake. Like any discipline, many things that we learn from doing music can be applied to other aspects of life.

Even though music lessons are most effective when they are regular and consistent, things sometimes happen that force a missed lesson. As long as there is general commitment to not missing lessons, we try to be as accommodating as possible with make-up lessons or credits.

If we ever miss your lesson, we will either try to arrange a suitable make-up time or credit the lesson.

There have been a lot of studies that consistently show music students as performing better than their peers at school. There is also some debate as to whether this is because of the music lessons themselves or because the sorts of people who do well at music are also the sorts who do well at school. Regardless, while there are techniques to incorporate study techniques into music practice, success at school often involves studying for the test, for which music could well be a distraction at times. However, music is perhaps one of the most ancient and rigorous of systems known to man. There are few (if any) aspects of intellectual life which has not been directly or indirectly influenced by music theory at some point in history. Not everyone does music to further their understanding of the world in that way, but many great thinkers have studied music at some level or another and have attributed their insights to it.

Every person comes to music lessons with a different background and with a different outcome in mind. As teachers, we usually try to thread the needle between boredom and frustration, so the pace is usually determined by the student. There is no limit on the potential complexity of music, but true artistry is often found in the simplest of things. Different instruments also have different learning curves with different intrinsic difficulties: Something that might be very simple and quick to learn on the piano might take years to master on a guitar. Whatever the case may be, one can learn enough to enjoy music in one lesson, but learning an instrument is never a process that really stops.

More.

Practicing is a difficult discipline. At least initially, it is a challenge to simply get into the habit of making music making part of one's routine (as it needs to be). That's why I recommend simply sitting at the piano and playing a single note, or taking the instrument out of the case. From that point it is natural to want to do a bit more, and as one learns more it becomes easier to do expand this into something more substantial. That's the pull part.

However, at some point it becomes desirable to push. At that point it might be helpful to set time or activity based goals. 5 minutes to start, 5 hours at university level. Regardless of how much practice is done, 5 minutes of high quality practice is infinitely superior to 5 hours of time filling. This is simply because we become skilled at what we practice, and if we practice carelessly, we learn to manifest that in our playing. It is for this reason that advanced students who first break into longer practice regimes sometimes don't find it immediately improves progress.

Music exams are Commonwealth tradition that serve a very useful function but whose utility should not be overestimated.
Exams should ideally be seen as steps on a staircase, rather than rungs on a ladder. In other words, they serve as resting points where one can evaluate what has been learned rather than handholds to pull oneself up with.
Exams also inherently interfere with the learning process, so it is better to use them sparingly when they are needed to solidify progress, rather than the main road to development.

At the same time, learning how to do exams and how to do well in them is a general skill that is well worth learning in any context. Music exams happens to be an excellent way to practice this skill because it blends practical and theoretical aspects a very demanding performance setting.
Advanced students may need to do exams for university entrance, in which case having some experience under the belt in that regard is always useful.

A recommendation to do an exam is therefore on an "as needed" basis.