 The Oboe BBoard
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Author: lucyw
Date: 2006-07-28 18:14
How much do your oboe lessons cost? And/or how much do you charge for lessons?
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Author: DressedToKill
Date: 2006-07-28 18:22
I don't take them weekly, so it's not so bad. :-) I personally consider it a bargain, given the education I'm getting from this person!
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Author: lucyw
Date: 2006-07-28 18:30
Right now, I'm trading lessons with my instuctor. I give her daughter piano lessons and she gives me oboe lessons. However, I'd like to try to take a lesson(s) from a really good teacher so I was just wondering what the going rate was.
(The "really good teacher" part sounds terrible. I don't mean to say that my teacher isn't good but she's just not very technical, doesn't know anything about making reeds, etc. Plus, I don't have anything to compare her lessons with since I've never taken from anyone else. So, it would be nice to try a few lessons with someone else.)
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2006-07-28 18:31
I'm lucky in that my oboe teacher lives about 5 miles from me and only charges me £19 an hour (though more often than not my oboe lessons do run on over an hour and she still charges me only for the hour) - and the fact she's an ex pro as well - most pro oboists or oboe professors will charge at least double that amount here, and unless you're loaded they're out of most people's pockets, and chances are there's still the train fare on top of that as most live or teach in the big cities.
There are a lot of county teachers that charge a lot more than that, and can't even play the oboe (or even their main instrument) to save their lives, though it makes me wonder why they're employed by the county - it's clearly a case of it's who they know, and not what they know.
At least going to a specialist for lessons (on any instrument) means they can demonstrate things that they know and use all the time, like certain fingering short-cuts when getting around some tricky passages instead of sticking to the basic fingering charts and getting all stressed. Or the "if it works, use it" philosophy for using an unorthodox fingering for a certain note which works better than the full or standard fingering in that specific situation.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: DressedToKill
Date: 2006-07-28 18:32
Depending on your metropolitan locale, you should be able to find reasonably competent oboe instruction in the vicinity of $50-70 an hour.
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Author: lucyw
Date: 2006-07-28 18:40
Well, I have an instructor picked out...we'll see if he'll take me and how much he charges....
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Author: ohsuzan
Date: 2006-07-28 20:11
When I started, I worked with someone who charged me $25/hr. -- and I got just about what I paid for.
My current teacher, with a more substantial oboe pedigree, charges $50/hr.
Am I getting twice as much teaching? Well, maybe. At least, I am getting the technical stuff.
I worked with a (not well-known but very good) master teacher in Santa Fe, though, and got about a year's worth of $50 lessons in an hour's time. Way worth the week's tuition.
Susan
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Author: oboesquirell
Date: 2006-07-28 21:08
My teacher only charges $40$ for one hour. I am really lucky because my teacher is FANTASTIC!
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Author: oboesquirell
Date: 2006-07-28 21:11
My old teacher during school charged $17$ for what was supposed to be 25 minutes, but actually turned into about 15-18 minutes.
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Author: vboboe
Date: 2006-07-28 23:11
my annual school charges $50 / hour, summer school is $46 / hour, with two different school registration & annual membership fees on top of that
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Author: cjwright
Date: 2006-07-30 15:43
Mr Mack and Mr. Robinson used to charge me $100 an hour. As did Mr. Killmer. Ms Douvas used to charge $150 an hour, but these were all about 4 years ago.
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Author: HautboisJJ
Date: 2006-07-31 02:56
RM80/US dollar simply divide by around 3.8 per hour. And usually, my lessons extend to 2-3 hours but the charge is still the same. At one time i was charged RM100 for 2 lessons. Talk about a teacher who DOESNT take advantage of his students, i guess he understands the struggles among Malaysian students and the bad music scene here (Major influence in the rates?). Anyways people, just came back from a successful performance of Handel's Messiah!
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Author: d-oboe
Date: 2006-07-31 12:47
If anything, I would say that a good education has no price. Really. However, you have to consider what your personal goals are. If you're relatively fresh in the oboe world, and aren't looking to pursue oboe at the highest level (and believe me - there are more non-pro oboe players than there are pro! or even semi-pro!) then studying with the highest rated teacher may not even be to your benefit. And actually sometimes not even possible - some high-level teachers may not accept the less advanced students.
If you're looking for a teacher to give you a good foundation and help start you on your way with reeds I would say no more than $80 CAD. The expertise that one pays for when studying with Douvas, Mack, Killmer etc. will not really be exploited to its fullest potential when studying at the amateur level. That's not to say that you wouldn't learn something from these teachers - by all means you would learn alot - it might just be too overwhelming to really gain a benefit.
My first teacher had her Masters in performance from McGill university, and she charged $40 an hour. (About 5 years ago) I paid somewhere around 8-15$ per reed. (Although I started learning to make my own soon after)
Go figure.
D
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Author: DressedToKill
Date: 2006-07-31 13:30
Very much agreed...there doesn't seem to be much point in studying with one of the greats if all you plan to do is be the best oboist in your community orchestra.
There are wonderful teachers everywhere, veritable unsung heroes who have produced fantastic students. I wouldn't be where I am today as a musician if it weren't for my first clarinet teacher, who was just a small-town oldster with a colorful past, but that man made me love music more than anything...
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Author: lucyw
Date: 2006-07-31 15:57
"Author: DressedToKill (170.148.10.---)
Date: 2006-07-31 13:30
Very much agreed...there doesn't seem to be much point in studying with one of the greats if all you plan to do is be the best oboist in your community orchestra."
I'm not sure that I get your point. My goal is not to be the best oboist in my community orchestra. My goal is to be the best oboist that I can be regardless of where I am playing. If there is a unwritten rule that community orchestras should not contain excellent musicians, then I'm unaware of it. It would be a sad day if all the musicians scattered across the globe said, "Ah well, I'm not sitting in the NY Phil...I should just quit trying to achieve excellence." Musicians strive to be good because they are musicians - not because of where they perform. That's why you can hear wonderful music across the globe from the largest cities to the smallest villages. Music lives everywhere and musicians who care about their playing live everywhere also. I hope the day never arrives when I tell one of my piano students that they should never try to achieve their greatest potential.
"There are wonderful teachers everywhere, veritable unsung heroes who have produced fantastic students. I wouldn't be where I am today as a musician if it weren't for my first clarinet teacher, who was just a small-town oldster with a colorful past, but that man made me love music more than anything... "
Yes, there are amazing teachers everywhere. It sounds like your former teacher was one of the "great" teachers, even though he lived in a small town and you probably paid him next to nothing for his time.
There is a difference between being a great teacher and a great performer. This is not to say that great performers cannot be great teachers - but it's not a given.
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Author: DressedToKill
Date: 2006-07-31 16:11
I didn't mean that at all...I was actually addressing D's post right above mine, where he makes a point that it might not be the best idea to try to study with a top-name teacher, as most of them just won't bother with someone who doesn't plan to try their hand at being a professional, usually not out of any snobbery, but they simply don't have the time between their own performance schedules, plus their conservatory teaching schedules.
Obviously we should all strive to be the best musicians we can be!
(And I agree 110% about your last point re: performers/teachers. Several of my teachers have been absolutely amazing performers, but, IMO, left much to be desired as teachers, and the opposite is also quite true, as proven by the legacy of one Miss Dorothy DeLay.)
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