📆

Set a recurring calendar event or alarm on your phone

Make sure you don’t miss your lesson: get an alert earlier in the day.

If any rescheduling has taken place, be sure to update your calendar immediately!

💷

Take exact cash to your lesson

Many pupils find it easier to pay at the beginning of each lesson so they don’t forget and so they have time to correct any issues which may arise.

🎧

Practise regularly through the week

Practising isn’t optional — it’s the only way to get good at music and is an ongoing requirement for lessons with Richard.

For pupils in lower primary: aim to do at least 10 minutes every day.

For upper primary and beyond: aim to begin with at least 20-30 minutes every day and increase as necessary.

These are just the bare minimum requirements to not get worse at your instrument! If you truly want to improve, you should always be practising old pieces to maintain them and new pieces until they’re 100% accurate every time and as musically expressive as you can get them to be.

Practice time can (and really should) be chunked into multiple sessions per day.
The more occasions you practise through the week, the more new material you can learn during your lesson.

Use all of the resources you’ve been given (e.g. written music, audio files, videos, reference sheets, prior knowledge, etc.)

Start early! If you practise immediately after your lesson, you’ve got a better chance of remembering what to do.

You should designate a specific time to practise. Put this into your daily calendar and see it through! Even years of lessons will achieve very little if practice is insufficient, or worse, non-existent!

🕰

Turn up on time — not too early, not too late

It is unlikely that the door will be answered if you arrive significantly earlier than your scheduled lesson time — when other lessons are taking place online or in person, doors are hard to hear and answering it disrupts someone else’s lesson!

It is also unlikely that you will get your full lesson time if you arrive significantly later than your scheduled lesson time. If you realise that you are running late, please try to send a message as soon as possible with this information.

Aim to be at the door right on time. We all share the exact same time on our electronic devices these days!

📧

Get in touch if you need help!

Email: rs@rsmts.com
Facebook messenger: facebook.com/richardsmithmusic