Let's Talk About Fees and Value

Fees are what you pay. Value is what you get for what you pay.

Lessons at Fairfax Piano are not the cheapest around. Nor is it the most expensive. But we think it gives you the most value.

It is a fair question to ask what value you get from any lessons that you take - from anybody.

Here are seven qualities you should look for from any piano teacher.

• Look for a personal connection. You should have a teacher who wants to know you; someone who wants to know your unique abilities, interests, and concerns.
• Look for someone who observes. You should have a teacher who will watch you carefully, who will come to understand you - your strengths and your shortcomings - and who will help you overcome your limitations so you can succeed.
• Look for someone who’s flexible. You should have a teacher who can easily accommodate your lifestyle. Changes happen in life all the time, and you should have a teacher who can roll with those changes and still keep you on track.
• Look for someone who encourages. You should have a teacher who is a positive person, and someone who finds the best in you and gently helps you to develop it. You should look for someone who doesn’t focus on the negative, but rather builds upon the positive.
• Look for someone who’s knowledgeable. You should have a teacher who knows what they’re talking about. It’s easy for any teacher to pick up a lesson guide that somebody else wrote and just walk you through page after page. Someone who puts their own spin on a lesson guide, or who takes off in a different direction, shows that they have a greater understanding of the skills that they’re trying to teach.
• Look for someone who can play music with other musicians. You’ll learn the most from someone who can make music alongside other musicians playing other instruments. It takes an extra level of skill to be able to do that, and a teacher who can play well with other musicians will be able to teach you so much more.
• Look for someone who teaches you how to learn. What is the point of learning to play the piano if you can only play the songs you learned during your lessons? There are skills in learning a new piece of music – skills in figuring it out in the first place, skills in practicing it, skills in perfecting it – that may or may not come along with piano lessons. Look for a teacher who can set you up for success long after you stop taking lessons.

Lessons at Fairfax Piano give you all seven of these qualities. If you would like to know more, please contact us.

Website-Subscription Lessons?

What you get for your money from website lessons falls short.

Website-subscription lessons can be pretty affordable and seem like a really good deal. You get to learn how to play piano on your own terms, on your own time, at your own pace, and in a convenient way. What do you get from website lessons? You get access to a set of prerecorded sessions that you can watch at any time. Maybe you’ll get a chat box or a way to send questions and get a customized reply. You figure you can learn the basics this way, because it seems to you like everybody starts with the same basics. Sounds good, right?

What don’t you get? Well, consider: your chatbox teacher has never met you and will never meet you. To them, you are an account number. Even if you ask question after question over email, your teacher is only responding to questions from an account number. They know your name because you have an account number. They don’t know you. If there’s some part of a session that you’re just not getting, they can’t adjust their lessons to help you grasp it. If you catch on to a concept quickly, the session keeps plodding along at the same pace, boring you with stuff you now understand.

Furthermore, because they don’t know you and have never met you, they can’t encourage you and inspire you in any personal way to reach for greater mastery of the skills that they’re trying to teach.

So what happens in the long run to your website subscription? For most people, it’s the same thing that happens to New Years’ Resolution gym memberships – you use it for awhile & then it gets set aside, pushed away by other more pressing activities. What value will you have gained from your cheap website subscription? Well, maybe you can now plink around on the piano with a few things, but can you really play the way you originally wanted to? Probably not.

Face-To-Face Lessons?

Face-to-face lessons give you more for your money. The greatest value you get from face-to-face lessons is a personal connection with a teacher who is trying to teach you, and not just teach an account number. Once you find that personal connection, then look for the other six qualities.

Face-to-face lessons can take place in Fairfax Piano's professional studio, or in the comfort and convenience of your own home, or online via teleconference. For any of these options that you choose, you get the same high-quality personal connection with one teacher who gets to know you.

What do all seven qualities put together mean? It means that you can truly learn how to play the piano (or keyboard). It means that come a holiday, or special occasion, or casual time, you can actually sit down at a piano and show yourself and your guests what you have learned. It means that you can find a piece of music that you like - or write your own - and be able to learn it and proudly play it at any time. It means that long after your lessons are over, you can know enough to be able to learn a new piece of music all on your own.