[Matthew Rusk]

Great question Lydia – have you tried out MuseScore (https://musescore.com/). I believe you can download the individual vocal melodies as PDF files for some songs, as long as someone has tabbed them out (they need to be popular songs for them to be in the database).

You can see an example here for an Amy Winehouse song:

Is this the kind of thing that you are after?

[Matthew Rusk]

Hi Eimear,

Great post and questions:) Personally I would recommend doing a pay one in advance model, so in Lesson 1 a student pays for Lessons 1. In Lesson 2 student pays for Lesson 2 & Lessons 3. In Lesson 3 student pays for Lesson 4 etc. so that they are always paying one lesson in advance. I have found this works better than getting students to buy 4 lessons in a block booking as these block booking points are often when students review whether they want to pay x4 the lesson price in on go & you see increased student drop off due to students having to pay larger single payments rather than smaller more regular payments – it is all psychological!

In the method above you get the security of knowing that a student has paid one lesson in advance & the money is in the bank for you, so gives you a similar security to what the block bookings do but with more flexibility to the student.

In regard to commission – commission is only generated when you take payment for lessons so please don’t worry about making payment for lessons that students haven’t paid you for yet. You can add the date of the lesson, Student Name, then select “Other” and add in 60 mins and £0.00, then in notes – “waiting for Alan to make payment”. Then when payment is made you can create another entry as date of the payment, Student Name, then select “Other” and add in “N/A” for mins and the commission amount due, then in notes “Alan made payment for his lesson today”. This means you never have to pay commission on lessons that you have not been paid for.

However, this should not be occurring often else something is wrong – you should be paid for all the lessons you teach! You should include in emails about first lesson, if you don’t already, that students must bring cash or a card to their lessons – then move them to the pay one in advance model thereafter.

If you are still having problems about students not paying you make them pre-pay for their second lesson before it is booked, then ask them to bring cash along to the lesson to pay for the third lesson etc.

As for the current students that owe you money, the truth is it is not going to be easy to gain payment from them. You should email them & I would be happy to create an “official invoice” for you as this sometimes gets students paying.

I think the most important thing is that your payment model is updated moving forward so you always get paid for your lessons – even if that means students have to pre-pay after the first lesson to book in with you. If you need a refund on any of the commission totals you have sent through just let me know – you shouldn’t have to pay for lessons that a student hasn’t paid you for. Hope the advice helps:) would be interesting to know what other teachers suggest too:)

Can I help you to create some official invoices, like the ones I send teachers, so you can send these to the students to try and gain payment from them? Perhaps an invoice with payment terms will help bring them to payment – let me know:)

[Matthew Rusk]

Glad we could help! I know that over the last few weeks this particular subject has come up so many times for me in talks with other educational facilities, it is a really hot topic at the moment – I think we will see some of the major players within music tuition bring out products that enable teachers to take payments by card on devices at the end of the lessons. I will keep you updated of products that I hear about that are in development at the moment in regard to taking contactless payments etc…it is such a developing market!

[Matthew Rusk]

Great question – my students all paid via cash for single lessons, then bank transfers for block bookings / voucher payments. I would get the odd cheque now and again – but mostly it was those two formats.

I know that Matt Jamison in Belfast has been looking into a portable card machine, I will ask him about it:) I also think Dave Rutherford in Middlesborough might know a little more about this type of thing.

As for cash being obsolete by 2025, personally I don’t think it will happen. The government’s main motivation for this is to ensure that all transactions are taxed properly (i.e. ending the cash in hand work culture that goes undocumented) – however, instead of ending this they risk people moving to a new form of currency (might be online) or an alternative for “cash” in real life, that would mean that it doesn’t achieve the aim that they intended. It is a huge political risk to implement such a change, that might backfire and actually decrease tax income. Personally I don’t think any future government will have the political drive to push this through – especially with the fallout of Brexit over the next 10 years being the main focus.

I might be totally wrong, but I believe cash will be hear to stay for the foreseeable future:)

[Matthew Rusk]

@owen-evans, @leigh-fuge – excited to update you that the “Skype Guitar Lessons” page is now on the third page in Google today, having moved up from the 7th page in Google last night when I posted my previous message:)