This book is for any music teacher working with elementary, middle school, and high school students in a private lesson setting. Materials for this text have been developed over 30 years of private teaching and have specifically been piloted with undergraduate and graduate music performance students at the University of Michigan, as they work to improve their teaching methods with their own private students.

Award-winning music educator Merlin B. Thompson invites today’s teachers to link their teaching with notions of humanity and create success by building on what students naturally bring to their own musical journey. Filled with over fifty practical and inspirational teaching tips, More than Music Lessons is a must-read for every genre of music studio teacher: vocal/instrumental, academic, traditional, individual/group, Suzuki, exam-based, and online. A four-part framework gets right to the heart of the matter: Parents - understanding the complexity of parental involvement and students’ home life Practicing - an adventure in autonomy, fluency, purpose, relatedness, reflection, and listening Projects - amplifying students’ musical persona with non-performance projects. Character - engaging students’ inborn authentic character to ensure meaningful musical participation Grounded in research yet enriched with real-life experiences and frequently asked questions, More than Music Lessons offers a comprehensive view of student-centered teaching, where teachers share rather than direct students’ musical explorations. This book provides resources for teachers who work with diverse student demographics and sheds light on how teachers may thoughtfully incorporate students’ sense of self, personal and world views, culture, individuality, and spirituality as anchors for their unfolding and unique musical journeys. More than Music Lessons will help studio teachers support and inspire their students for a lifetime of genuine and joyful music making.

Future and current independent private music educators will find this book an invaluable resources for establishing and maintaining a private music studio. Private music instructors will learn what they should expect professionaly, personally, and financially from their independent music instruction business. Until now, no single resource has existed that fully explains how to run this type of business successfully. This book presents all aspects of private music instruction through an easy-to-read, concise, and engaging instructional format. Following the sound advice presented will help to greatly alleviate the problems that all beginning independent instructors face by specifically mapping out chronological steps for establishing and maintaining a private instruction music business. The field of private music education has been inundated by less-than-professional individuals who have made it difficult for legitimate, qualified instructors. The Private Music Instruction Manual shares years of information and experiences in the hope of legitimizing the field of private music instruction. In a world where there is decreasing priority and structure in public music education, private music instructors become increasingly important to prepare the next generation of musicians. No matter the size of your private music instruction business, the advice presented in The Private Music Instruction Manual will help to improve any private music business. From the Midwest Book Review: With The Private Music Instruction Manual; A Guide For The Independent Music Educator, author Rebecca Osborn draws upon her many years of experience and expertise as an adjunct college music professor and owner of three private music studies to write an informed and informative guidebook specifically for musicians and music instructors who want to teach students in a profitable private practice but are not familiar with or knowledgeable about setting up a music instruction business enterprise. Rebecca Osborne provides a wealth of invaluable, professional, effectively organized and presented instructions on establishing and maintaining a music teaching business and shows what to expect professional, personally, and financially from independent music instruction. If you want to make money teaching other how to play any kind of music instrument, then you need to give a careful (and profitable!) reading to Rebecca Osborn's The Private Music Instruction Manual!

100 short, information-packed nuggets to make your parent, teacher and student relationship the best it can be! As an independent music teacher, one of the trickiest relationships to navigate is the one between the teacher, the parents and the student. This easy-to-read book is full of valuable, practical advice to help teachers cultivate lasting and healthy relationships with parents, which ultimately benefits the student. The 100 short lessons each stem from years of questions from parents, group teacher discussions, and situations that almost always arise in the field of private music lessons. Every parent who has a child enrolled in music lessons, or is thinking about it, should read this book! The success of your experience relies greatly on the enhancement of the parent-teacher relationship.

This book offers one approach for teaching piano to students with special needs.

This book guides parents, teachers, & students of music through the maze of starting & successfully advancing through instrumental music lessons. This invaluable aid to parents offers information on how to obtain FREE or low priced instruments through the schools, instrument care & repair & much more. It gives teachers a lesson outline to follow & serves as printed reinforcement that they can recommend to students & parents to supplement lesson books. Dr. James M. Thurmond, founder of the U. S. Armed Forces School of Music & Prof. Emeritus Lebanon Valley College says, "...the book delineates everything from the correct approaches to parent-music-teacher relations to methods of teaching, purchase & care of instruments, music department organization, etc. for music students & their parents to know....its study will be beneficial for those who are committed to the support of the teaching of music in our educational institutions." John H. Thyhsen, Prof. of Music, Glassboro State College, & Principal Trumpet Philadelphia Opera, & Philadelphia Pops Orchestra directed by Peter Nero, says, "....I recommend this text to every teacher of music, parent, & music education student."