 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: kthln.hnsn
Date: 2013-09-19 13:41
It seems I have tried everything to gain clarinet students in the area I live (it is a dying papermill town). I have offered the first lesson free, I do not have high prices by any means (and even then I am not in this for the money, I genuinely just want to teach clarinet because I love to!), I have advertised online, made fliers, and I just am at a loss of what to do. This just seems like a terrible area for music lessons if you are not a piano teacher or violin teacher, but I don't want to believe that if I don't have to. I am the only clarinet teacher within a 25 mile radius of this town, I believe. There are no adult music groups to join in this town, the nearest one is about 30 minutes away. The schools seem quite involved in music, mainly orchestra. Perhaps there just honestly is no interest in wind instrument lessons?
So I am looking for any ideas from you all as to how I can (hopefully) gain students! I have thought of doing a master class, but then realized I've only been to one of those in my career and I don't have a degree in music (do I need to in order to do a master class??) so I am not sure I'm the best candidate to hold a clarinet master class.
Any thoughts or ideas?
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Author: Katrina
Date: 2013-09-19 14:02
1. You don't need degrees to hold master classes. You need to be able to "bring people in" to hear/watch you work with students on specific pieces.
2. If there are any school bands around, get to know the band directors. Most of my students come from referrals from them. (That will change soon because I have a new teaching position.)
3. I'm surprised that there are few wind bands around. Wisconsin (like Minnesota where I live) seems to have been part of the whole 19th century "town band" thing. Maybe you could start one?
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Author: kdk
Date: 2013-09-19 14:48
Are there any music stores that offer lessons in your area? It's not the most lucrative way to teach because the store takes a cut of the fee they charge off the top, but a music store that sells the supplies the kids in the local school music programs need will be known to parents of potential private students.
If that's not an option, the best way to find students on your own is by trying to get referrals from the local band and orchestra directors. Unless "orchestra" in your schools means "string orchestra," there should be at least a few clarinetists involved. Are there any music programs for kids outside of the school programs? A local Youth Orchestra or Youth Music program that includes a band? Often if there isn't a viable program within the schools, (you say there aren't bands in yours), interested parents will set up one of their own for their kids to play in, often on weekend time. If anything like that exists in your area, the people who direct their band(s) may be interested in having a clarinet teacher to suggest for their interested students.
This problem has been discussed before in this BBS (you could check the history). The suggestion has been made of trying to get to do master classes in the schools with the cooperation of the music teachers. As a former (retired) school music teacher, I have to say proactively that I don't find this a viable solution in most cases. The teachers of performing ensembles in the schools have a limited amount of rehearsal and student contact time and are (in most cases) unlikely to want to give any of it up for a master class of that sort. You're better off trying somehow to motivate the teachers to try sending students to you outside of school hours. If you can get a couple of students that way and the teachers can see that the results are good - your students are progressing faster and seem to enjoy taking private lessons - they will send others and the parents of the ones you have will spread the word about you to other parents. You need to make yourself available to the school programs as a tool and resource without getting directly in the teachers' hair and asking them to give you time with students that they really need for themselves.
Good luck.
Karl
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-09-19 19:24
Kalee -
You've tried every way except the essential one -- personal relationships, a/k/a networking. Get to know everyone in town: every high school, junior high and elementary school music teacher and band director, every music store owner, every teacher of any instrument, every professional musician. Get to know the music director for every church and offer to come in to talk with the children's choir about the clarinet and your life as a musician. Bring a sheet of paper with your phone number on tear-off strips along the bottom and ask permission to put it on the bulletin board. Speak to each kid as an individual, not to the whole room.
Find out the "instrument day" in each school, when the music store owners bring instruments for kids to try and choose among. Suggest to the music store owner that you can help and be part of the team. Go along, help kids try the clarinet and tell their parents how much a beginner needs just a few private lessons to learn how to put the instrument together without bending the keys, how to put on a reed, how to make an embouchure, how to blow. Once you "prime the pump," those first lessons can turn into a continuing flow.
At each lesson, your job is to establish a personal connection with the student. Remember that you're probably the only adult from whom a kid gets total attention for half an hour every week. Remember how important this can be to them. Listen like crazy and talk to each one as a person, different from everyone else. It's about talking less and listening more. When you hear something not done right, play it right and then say, "OK, play it that way."
Teach by doing. Don't describe 4/4. March around the room together. Then do 3/4 by turning in circles until you both dissolve in dizziness and laughter. Teach rhythmic patterns with word phrases that match -- preferably silly ones. Play a recording of the first 10 seconds of the Beethoven 5th and then sing, "Beethoven's wig. Was very big." Then have the student sing it with you and then play it on the clarinet.
Part of the inventiveness of being a teacher is coming up with words that teach the music. "This is the Symphony, that Schubert wrote and left unfinished."
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Master classes are different and more difficult. You must be totally on top of each piece that will be played and have things to suggest about how to do particular spots better and how to play the emotions as well as the notes.
Master classes are for comparatively advanced players, who come in for approval, but also, if they have talent, to be stretched -- to come out having experienced or at least heard and tried something they hadn't done before. The difficult part for you is striking the balance, individually for each student, between stroking and stretching. See what I wrote a few days ago at http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=393466&t=390280.
You must be by far the better player, but also a great listener and psychologist. The Drucker master classes on YouTube are at one extreme http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=drucker+master. He's the monster, but each student really has something, and Drucker stretches them hard.
Yehuda Gilad is just as direct, but more gentle http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blxyqCzgJls.
It's like a private lesson writ large. You hear a problem and show the student how to do it better and then ask for it to be played that way.
An addition, suggested by my wife, who built a big studio of recorder players: Get an email address that describes you, such as clarinet-teacher@gmail.com. Set up a web site and a blog, where you give free half-lessons, with the opportunity for students to get more by coming to you for (paid) lessons.
After you get that going, call up the local newspaper and ask for the reporter who writes about music. Get a story written about how you're building a teaching practice, what you offer and that you have openings for students. Make sure your site and email address are in the story. If there's a college in town with a student newspaper, do the same there.
Ken Shaw
Post Edited (2013-09-20 04:31)
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