I have had one pupil who told me that she took up the piano as a result of instruction from her psychotherapist I am convinced that others come as for relaxation as for music instruction

I teach a lot of adult beginners/intermediates - I have some wannabe jazzers but mostly with people with stressful jobs who want to enjoy playing some music Some middle aged "dad" guitarists who wish they had more hair and less waistline

I think this is where the "old and leathery" look comes in useful I am older than all my pupils and can listen and offer non committal comments on problems should they voluteer them

How does it work for other teachers (sorry if this has been covered but I could not find anything )

OK, so I'm going to answer this as a pupil rather than as a teacher.

When I decided to have singing lessons in 2003, it was in order to enhance my enjoyment of my main means of relaxation from a hugely demanding job (I was the European Finance Director for an American company).

Singing was the way I let off steam, and I decided I wanted to do more of it. For me, the therapy was in the act of belting out an aria in the car on the way home from an awful day, or in engaging my brain to learn new music rather than stewing over the latest work problem at home. Lessons were a means to that end, rather than therapy sessions in themselves.

Then I had one particular singing lesson. I was under a phenomenal amount of stress (the job was disintegrating and my contract was about to expire, the choir of which I was chairman was in the throes of some particularly obnoxious internal politics despite my attempts to stop it, and some other domestic stuff) and I burst into tears in the lesson.

I cried for around twenty minutes of an hour long lesson. Then we had a bit of a talk. My teacher encouraged me to value my singing for its own sake rather than as a reaction to something else, he suggested I ditch the choir chairmanship and he persuaded me to sing "Dove Soni I Bei Momenti" using the mood I was currently in. It was probably the best I've ever sung it.

From then on, the relationship I have with my teacher changed. I was much more open and more relaxed with him, and my technique came on in leaps and bounds. Before that day I never mentioned anything else about my life to him, afterwards I'd mention anything that happened even though we didn't actually discuss it.

And when I decided last year to ditch accounting and focus on music, he was aware of the process of decision making, and provided me with advice and mentoring every step of the way.

I have an adult pupil who has taken up lessons with me because he is very over weight. He was told by a doctor that he needed to loose weight and the doc suggested that he take up a hobby so his mind was not always on food and diets. It seems to have really worked for him, a year and a hald later he has lost loads of weight and can play his instrument well. Music works wonders!!

Interestring thread, but I'm pretty certain none of my adult pupils have music lessons as therapy sessions. They take them because they enjoy music and enjoy learning to play the violin. In fact, come to think of it, the violin could prove the least likely instrument to offer therapy or solace anyway - when starting out many students battle with serious intonation issues in addition to basic tone production. Perhaps not the ideal way of unwinding after a stressful day. Quite the opposite in some cases.

However, I would say that those who do best at the violin are those who are sensitive in their nature and also have patience to do much practice alone to ensure some success. Maybe there is more than we think to particular personality traits suiting certain instruments.

As a teacher, I'm neither old or leathery - not at 32 years of age.

my pupil I mentioned plays learns the violin with me. He does battle with the usual intonation problems but that is all great for him as it gives him something positive to focus on.

Oh and I am only 26 so not old or leathery either!! Not yet anyway!!

I too started taking music lessons as a form of therapy after a bout of serious depression (12 months + off work). This was on my doctors advice, although to be fair to him, he said get a hobby which I interpreted as learn to play another instrument. However, although the trigger to start lessons was down to a medical problem, I took the lessons seriously from the start. In the intial discussion with my music teacher (who was aware of the depression) we agreed that the best route forward was to work towards passing exams but without the pressure to achieve within a set timescale, just when I felt able to. The reason for this choice was that it gave me a target to aim for rather than just coasting along and that's how I work best. The music has been a life saver. I was already a qualified teacher (with a music degree) working in a primary school but now work as a peri/private music tutor. Amongst my pupils I now teach an adult who views the lessons as a form of therapy.

From my own experience I'd say that the reason for taking lessons doesn't matter so long as it is the pupil who wants to learn and to benefit. It also doesn't matter what level he/she reaches so long as the music is enhancing their life in some way.

Speaking as an adult learner.........

My piano and bassoon teachers mean an awful lot to me. Particularly my bassoon teacher. I look forward to my lesson immensely, not just because of the progress I know I'll make on the instrument, but because my teacher inspires me in ways way beyond music.

Yes, maybe it is "therapy"..........but I'd be hard pushed to say where the "music" stops and the "therapy" begins. I think the music itself is part of the therapy - a skilled teacher seems to be able to release the "magic" of the music.

Re "Old and leathery " was a reference to my appearance not to any other teachers I teach rock guitar and looking like me helps with the image as "rock dads" who are menopausal at 40ish can feel superior having 20 or so years on me I frequently get cast as an aging rocker on TV having done my stint in the lineup on Never Mind the Buzzcocks Its not nearly so funny at a live recording as they edit down 50 percent of the so called "comedy" usually because the language is unbroadcastable

The most rewarding aspect of teaching is voice - I can usually make some major difference to voices within about 4 lessons - The rewards are huge and while I charge well this is a bonus

I certainly look forward to my music lessons as a highlight of the week. Sometimes when I am having a bad week the thought of them keeps me sane!

I think teaching adults is what keeps ME sane!

No way could I teach only children, it would drive me scatty.

One of my adult students is a lovely lady in her mid-fifties. She started lessons with me about eight years ago, and is always the first with her cheque book out at the beginning of each term. But quite often she likes to chat before playing, she never has and never will take an exam, it's purely relaxation for her and she has progressed to about Grade 6 standard. Yesterday evening she arrived (I know it's half term, but I owed her a lesson), sat on the sofa and said 'Well, do we want a lesson or do you want to hear all the gossip?'. I would have liked at least to have heard her pieces through, but it's what she wanted, so we had a glass of red and half and hour's chinwag and she went home happy and looking forward to next week. Who am I to argue??

Adding my pennyworth as an adult learner. I think music helps keep me sane in a stressful world. Whether the lessons are therapy or not I don't know, but my teacher, age 22, has given me so much confidence, and self respect as far as playing is concerned that it may well be. At the grand old age of 44 I am only 2 years younger than her Mum, and sat next to her at my teachers final recital last week, but when we are in a lesson, age and everything else go out of the window, and the aim is to get me playing as well as possible for my grade 5 in about 4 weeks. Aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!
Beverley.

Different adults take up an instrument for different reasons. I currently have 7 adult pupils:

1 Aged 47 - adult beginner; has always wanted to learn violin. Both her kids also learn with me. She is very musical but doesn't practise enough because she's a doctor and doesn't have much free time. She loves her lessons though and is making steady, though slow progress.

2 Aged about 40ish. Already plays violin well but wants to be a jazzer. Works as a solicitor but loves music and puts a lot into it - practises whenever he can, makes good progress

3 Aged 32. Plays jazz guitar but also wants to be a jazz violinist. Made excellent progress for a while but has slacked off recently because of work pressure.

4 Aged 45. Single, working mum of 2, always wanted to play violin. Has bought a Gliga which has improved her commitment no end. Practises a lot and is progressing very well.

5 Aged 22. Adult returner, very keen to reach grade 8 and also play jazz. Practises regularly, making good progress.

6 Aged 25. Adult returner, PhD student. Has made amazing progress because she practises so much!

7 Aged 27. Adult beginner. Works full time but does practise and has done really well, now playing folk and jazz after only a year.

Reading through all those makes me realise all my adult pupils are really motivated - because the desire to play is coming from them; it's something they've all always wanted to do, plus the fact they're paying for it so need to make it worth their while!

I've had other adult pupils in the past who've drifted off due to growing lack of motivation/time to practise/work and family pressure etc etc. The current bunch are strong, possibly because I've realised that it's up to me to locate exactly what they want to play and enable them to play it. Most of them are also very keen on the idea of a sort of 'gypsy orchestra' I'm thinking of starting up in the Autumn, because there's nothing like the goal of playing live with a bunch of friendly people to keep them motivated!

Sometimes it's such a relief to have a motivated adult come through the door after a string of exhausted, over-extended children....

Violinia

Each one of my students has a different relationship with me and with their music-making - that's what makes the job so interesting and so special.

I teach a 74-year old grandma the oboe (that's quite old for an oboist) and she's great but when her neighbour of 85 died recently, she had a good cry in her lesson and said she knew I'd understand better how she was feeling than her husband had.

I find myself turning into a kind of pseudo-Counsellor with quite a few of my adults - concerning their work, their children, their health and so on. Quite often they'll do a dump on the week's stresses and strains for the first 5 minutes of the lesson and then by gently re-focussing them as to why they're in my home (ie for a music lesson) we can take the stress out of those situations. It's not at all unusual for some of them to leave saying something along the lines of "I feel better for that".

I don't see myself as anything other than a professional music teacher (and would never say I was) but, if coming for lessons, provides them with some kind of "therapy" then that's fine by me.

oops sorry, this is really all ears, didn't notice that Viohazard was the last one to use the computer...
Viohazard's guitar teacher teaches more middle-aged to more-than-elderly-let's be-honest-and-call-them-OLD students than any other music teacher I have ever met. He plays local recitals etc, but says that he was surprised to find how much he enjoyed teaching, and that made him decide to focus on teaching. Some of his older students are not great players, but they are mostly competent, and unbelievably motivated!

I'm sure that some of them do come mostly for a few kind words and a little break from the everyday routine - but that is also true of some children. A friend said she sent her kids to piano lessons for no better reason than that they always came back with a smile on their faces, no matter how worn out and downcast they appeared when they got home from school, where the teacher focused constantly on shortcomings.

Viohazard's guitar teacher teaches at various places, including a quiet coffee-shop where he teaches at the back of the room, behind a small screen. This arrangement means that I get to gossip over a coffee with some of the older students on their way in and out of lessons, and it's obvious that his enthusiasm for music is something that his students enjoy sharing. I don't hear a lot of personal gossip, but plenty of music talk goes on, and a lot of playing with and for students before and after lessons - of course, that's dependent on circumstances (in this case, the teacher has one very late lesson, and a long gap before that). Lessson time is focused and organized, but outside that time, there is a lot of reaction from coffee-shop staff or patrons, chat with waiting students, etc. I assume that the teacher likes this type of location precisely because it suits adult students so well. They are obviously recharged and remotivated by the social contact with other people interested in music, as well as their lessons.

I have always used playing music as a way of letting of steam. As I first started doing this on the piano when I was taking my 'O' levels this can hardly be considered to be an adult only form of "therapy."

Since I have started having oboe lessons I differentiate between playing "to let off steam" and practicing and when I start to play know perfectly well which of the two I intend to do.

I definitely do not see my lessons as a form of therapy - they are a means of acquiring a technique (which improves the "letting of steam" repertoire and makes it more satisfying). Occasionally when something unforseen has come up and I haven't been able to do as much practice as I would have liked I have said at the beginning of the lesson that I have had a hard/bad week and done little practice but I have never gone into details about what has gone wrong.

I don't have music lessons for therapeutic/relaxation reasons. I've always preferred having a day job which I find easy and can go and earn my keep for 7.5 hours and then leave it. This leaves me free (and this is a big word in my life) to do what interests me most - so I put more into my chosen activities, take them seriously, work hard at them and as a consequence find them more rewarding. I enjoy them, too, because I'm not dependent upon them for earning a living - that would change the perspective for me .

Music is a therapy to a stressful life, but that is byproduct not a raisin d'etre

Very well put, Jane, I think you hit the nail on the head with that one.

Hear, hear, jane!!

My older teenagers certainly use our classes to relax and chill out a bit. They DO work but we also have quite a lot of girly chat .

One of my 17 year-olds wrote recently - 'Kodaly is not just musical training, it's emotional therapy'!

They love to just sing some beautiful music - no matter what troubles have been going on in their lives during the week, the worries all float away on a gorgeous Cherubini canon...

The one-to-one tuition scenario can provide "therapy" whatever the age of the pupil. I recently had a ten-year-old collapse in floods of tears in the middle of a piece of sight-reading - "I can't do this..blub, blub..why do I have to do this..?" , etc. It turned out he was under a lot of pressure in other areas - which I discovered over juice and a biscuit - and had been finding himself too tense to play at all.

Sometimes a music teacher can find him/herself in a similar position to the priest in the confessional - I have heard an awful lot of things that I'm sure would horrify the parents - or the partner, in the case of an adult! They all seem to trust me implicitely, and I have never repeated any of it, but I usually say "Right, what are we playing now!!??" if I feel that I'm being told too much for comfort!

I was thinking about this, and I think the only time my lessons could remotely be classed as therapy, besides the therapeutic nature of playing and learning music, is in my piano lessons - and I suspect that's because my teacher is my friend, and has been a good friend for considerably longer than he's been my teacher!

I was just wondering - if a child (or an adult!) got upset and you had to take time out for a juice and a biscuit (or a wine and a fag) -- would you still charge the full lesson fee?

Ax

As a student I would expect to pay for the lesson if I got upset and took time out for a juice/biscuit/wine/fag. It wouldnt be the teacher's fault that I used the lesson like this and she/he shouldn't have to suffer financially because I felt unstable about something.
I suppose however there might be rare circumstances where the teacher could be a bit discretionary about charging, depending on the severity of the cause of the upset and the relationship of the student and teacher. But I definetely dont think that there should be any automatic expectation of a fee waiver if the whole lesson is spent eating biscuits and crying.

It is as likely to be the case that the lesson over-runs, so I wouldn't even think about chopping the fee! (For example, if one pupil early in the evening takes five minutes extra, then the last one is likely to be 15 mins over. Those who are entered for exams will always get my full attention, whereas those who aren't will stick to the 30 mins. Not a problem so far. It will work the other way next term, and they all understand that.)

It is very important that pupil and teacher maintain a good relationship. This is more important than quibbling over how every 30 seconds is spent. I do my best to ensure that we fill every moment with something constructive, but sometimes we have to look at the big picture. And with all respect to the paying parents, they are not always 100% aware of what their children are having to do ; the non-musical ones do not always fully comprehend the concentration that is required, and sometimes a little TLC is in order.