I am excited to announce that Jennifer Linn (pictured right) is busily listening to and scoring over twenty-five 2009 Young Composer's Festival entries.  We have entries representing studios of 9 member, plus 1 non-member, teachers this year. 

In their July, 2009 issue, The Music Trades reported on a new national Gallup poll commissioned by the National Association of Music Merchants and conducted regularly since 1978. They concluded that music making is at an all-time high, support for music education is solid, and there's a widespread belief that 'music makes you smarter,' referencing the theme of NAMM's advocacy campaign. Here are some of the highlights from "How Musical Is America?"

--73% of those who responded believe that children should be exposed to music before the age of five.

 

--Parents continue to be the prime influence in determining musical participation. 45% of those who play said it was their parents encouragement that got them started compared to 24% who said they were interested on their own.

 

--Music is on the rise... in 1997, 38% of households reported having at least one musician was 38%.

--More boys are joining the fun... The 1985 survey showed 53% of music makers were female. The new survey shows that 52% are now male.

 

--Piano is the most popular instrument (30%) followed by guitar (25%) and woodwinds (12%).

 

--Using the results of the survey and Census data, the results suggest that there are at least 512,000 private music teachers in the US. If that's the case, music teachers outnumber members of the United Auto Workers Union.

Read more about this Gallop poll here... 

Dr. Andrew Hisey will present this year's Fall Workshop, "Laying a Foundation for Improvisation and Play with Your Music."

A well managed studio means spending less running your business and more time teaching. Today, studio management websites offer tools to automate tasks and opportunities to connect with students and parents.

One of the best online management sites that I have found is www.musicteachershelper.com. The site provides business support and a website that you can use to communicate with your students. They offer a free trial of up to three students and monthly paid subscriptions range from $10.95 for up to ten students to an unlimited plan for $24.95.

They make it easy to adjust your subscription. Simply deleting students or moving them to the 'waiting list' brings up the 'downgrade' option.

The Home page offers a video tutorial and links to directions that explain how to use the site. This is also where you add students, update preferences like email templates for announcements and reminders, maintain your profile, and build your website. The Calendar feature allows you to easily schedule lessons and events, reconcile attendance, and create invoices.  Events can even be exported to another calendar and 'synched' to mobile devices, online calendars or your website. From the Student tab you can access a list of students or parents, send emails, access the Lending Library (how much music have we all lost over the years?), track practice logs, and even track repertoire. The Lesson tab allows access to lesson history and notes and contains guides to create studio policies. In addition to viewing individual account status, the Billing tab includes handy trackers for mileage, expenses and income from other sources such as books and supplies. Here you can also issue a credit, charge a fee or see all transactions for a given student. The Invoicing section allows convenient automatic or manual invoicing.

 

What really sets musicteacherhelper.com apart is the immediate access to training as a new user while still being easy to use once you become more experienced with the site. Flexibility is a prominent feature throughout the site, allowing you to manage your account without having to make telephone calls. In a pinch, contacting real people for help is quick and easy. When I called, my questions were answered in short order.

The benefits of having a site that manages so many aspects of running a studio are priceless. While we are capable of doing all these things on paper or with a slew of other programs, the value of a 'one stop solution' is found in the time freed up to do what we do best: teach. Any time we can streamline tasks (think of automatic dishwashers) without giving up control, we give ourselves permission to spend our time doing the things we love. Musicteacherhelper.com can help you efficiently streamline your studio making the nominal the monthly cost a 'sound' investment.

 

 

 

Cellist Peled and Pianist Kalman to Perform "Russian Evening" at Farley's



 

While listening to music, neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, asks the questions "where do goose bumps come from?" and "what's going on in my brain that allows the goosebumps to happen?"

 

Levitin leads a group of researchers as they investigate music's fundamental physical structure; its biological, emotional and psychological impact; its brain altering and healing powers and its role in human evolution.

 

The Music Instinct: Science and Song is a fascinating two-hour documentary on the science of music that premiered in June on PBS.  The producers also launched a companion website that includes interviews and performances from the documentary.

Researchers and scientists from a variety of fields are using groundbreaking techniques that reveal startling new connections between music and the human mind, the body and the universe. Together with an array of musicians from rock and rap to jazz and classical, they are putting music under the microscope.

"The brain is teaching us about music and music is teaching us about the brain," says Levitin." Music allows us to understand better how the brain organizes information in the world. There are a lot of different factors that go into our emotional appreciation of music [like] the memories we have of a particular song that we heard at a particular time in our lives."

 

Click here to see Dr. Oliver Sacks discuss the importance of early music training
 

 Why Kids Don't Make Music

"A broad national survey of high school children offers new insights into why they drop out of music programs or never join in the first place. 38% of students said they didn't participate in music because of a lack of time. Another 36% sited competition from other activities, particularly sports. 12% said they didn't like the instructor."

Source: Music Trades Magazine, July 1959