To music students on this forum: Have you ever studied with two teachers concurrently for the same instrument? If so, did you see both teachers regularly, or see one regularly and the other less frequently? And did the lessons work out well?

To teachers on this forum: Have you ever taught a student who works with another teacher concurrently? If so, did you find teaching such a student difficult, or did you collaborate with the other teacher to avoid overlaps and conflicting approaches?

When I was about 14-16 years old, I was studying with a Professor from the RAM, I travelled down to his house every 2-4 weeks. At the same time I had a lesson once a week with a local teacher. The local teacher was aware that she was essentially a 'fill-in'. We'd work on whatever I was studying in London, and spend time on things that I didn't do with my London professor such as studies/scales etc.

This seemed to work quite well for a while. I stopped the local lessons as I approached O-levels as a) I just didn't have the time to fit her in, and I was able to keep the momentum going in my practice for the 2-3 week period by then.

With hindsight I don't know how she felt in being a 'sub-contractor', but she never appeared to have a problem with it to me.

This was discussed at some length a while ago - you might like to try a search.

I have only done this once, when I suspected my local teacher wasn't able to take me further. She got me to grade 8, but a friend who was taking a diploma with her failed twice. She was hopeless at languages - an essential skill for a singing gteacher. I eventually found a much better teacher, but had to travel 130 miles each way, each Saturday for my lessons . I only kept the local one on until I felt sure it was worth travelling (local one was reputedly the best in my area, being also a professor at a well-known conservatoire! )
I competed in a local festival and won every class with very encouraging remarks. My local teacher said it was about time I took notice of what she had been telling me all these years! Truth is, she kept saying that this song needed more work, or that that phrase needed more support, but never told me how to do it! I never gave anywhere near enough support until I went to my present teacher (yes, six diplomas later I'm still have so much to learn) because no-one told me what to do with my body to do it.
I didn't continue concurrent lessons long, and I wouldn't advise anyone else to do it. Also I would not knowingly teach someone if they were going to another teacher as well. We are all so different in our ideas and styles.

I don't think it's a good idea to have two teachers for the same instrument, nor do I think it's necessary. I would never teach a student if they were having lessons with someone else - there is bound to be conflict, no two teachers teach exactly the same way.

I certainly wouldn't have two teachers at the same time and I certainly wouldn't allow my students to do likewise.

David

I've been in the situation of having two teachers twice (piano). One time I had one teacher for contemporary music and one for classical music and this worked very well (much like playing two different instruments). However, the other time I was in the situation of having two teacher for exactly the same (rule of the school, not my choise) and that didn't work at all. They had different views on certain thing, and that was very confusing. And although I had only one lessen every week, teachers taking turns, the workload was much more than having one lesson a week with one teacher. Therefore I couldn’t study my pieces as thoroughly as I was used to, and that took away much of the fun. So my advice is unless you have the two teachers for clearly two different things don’t do it.

I take lessons at a local music school were lessons are booked and paid for on a 12 week termly basis. My teacher is a freelance musician earning a living by a combination of recording, gigging and a bit of teaching. Since the gigging takes priority over the teaching there are a occasions when she can't make the lessons and arranges a dep to cover. This has never been a problem and it can be helpful to get a different approach to the same issue. I may get advice such as X is an excellent pianist, see if you can spend the lesson working on how to play with a pianist, or Y knows a lot about the technical aspects of embouchure etc make sure you ask him about that.

I also know people who've had (or been advised to have) different teachers for classical and jazz - I think that is something that can possibly work well.

All situations require mutual respect between the different teachers and pupil.

I had two teachers at the RNCM on flute, but they were husband and wife and liked to work as a team!!!! It worked very well for me, though I wouldn't want to do it if they weren't working together.

I wanted to do this for a while so i could keep with my current teacher until i took the exam i was working with towards her. At the time i had also been offered a place for lessons in school which i was desperate to take because i had wanted it for ages, and getting to my other lessons was not practical. However the school said if i wanted the place it would have to be taken straight away, but they wouldn't let me carry on with both lessons for about 2 weeks. I thought it was a bit harsh!!

I wanted to do this a few months ago, but due to circumstances ended up simply switching teachers instead of combining. Good thing, too, for my second teacher has an extremely different, lot's of the time, opposite way of interpreting things than my first teacher.

Question, sometimes people want to switch because they have outgrown their previous teacher and want to be challenged with a new teacher, but just don't want to hurt their first teacher's feelings. Is this the case? It was with me.

Unless, it's an arrangement with a "main" teacher and an occasional opinion from a "secondary" teacher, then I would say just stick with one, personally. If both are equally your teacher then you will probably get caught in the middle of stuff like, "get quieter here" when your other teacher told you to crescendo. Or, "play deep into the keys here" when your other teacher told you to play on the surface there, ect. It works if one teacher has all the "say" and one is just for opinion, but if you find you like the other teacher's opinions more, then maybe you really should just switch to them!

I was kind of wondering about this too as I'm currently just getting lessons at school which are only about 35 minutes long and often get cut short. Not really enough when I'm trying to a) do grade 8 this year and b ) get into university to do music.
Also they are with another girl who, although she is approximately the same standard as me, isn't really serious about doing exams/taking music further. My school flute teacher doesn't seem that keen for me to start regular private lessons with her (I think she has more students than she wants already).
So I was half-considering finding another flute teacher, probably in Edinburgh, whom I could learn privately with maybe every two weeks (as they tend to be more expensive).
But do you think this would be a bad idea? Or no-one would be willing to take me (as some people seem to be saying here) because I already have lessons?

I think that it's fairly likely that both your present teacher and a prospective new one would expect you to make a choice, one or the other but not both.

As a teacher I've only had one experience of sharing a pupil with another teacher and from my point of view it definitely didn't work.

In my peri job, I inherited a young boy who was struggling to learn the cornet. After one year of tuition with the previous teacher he still couldn't read music or string any notes together. To allow him to play in his lessons the previous teacher had resorted to writing the note names on the music, which did him no good at all as all he did was look at those instead of learning to recognise the actual notes.

I decided to take him back to basics (after discussions with him and his parents) and teach him to read the music properly and to start with he was making good progress. Then after about a term he seemed to lose all of the knowledge he'd acquired since I'd been teaching him. To cut a long story short, the boy let it slip in a lesson that he had another teacher and that this teacher wrote the note names on the music for him because 'it was easier for him'.

A chat with his parents confirmed that he did have another teacher but they hadn't told me 'because they didn't want to upset me!' It wasn't a reflection on my teaching, I was assured, but they just wanted their son to progress faster. When I got them to listen to their son's playing they realised that he had lost the skills he'd acquired and that the situation hadn't helped him at all. Eventually I had to say that they had to choose which teacher they wanted for their son as it was obvious that the situation created by them didn't work.

They decided to stay with me and a year later they (and me) had the pleasure of watching their son play a solo in the music assembly at his school.

I had a similar experience to Allanah a few years ago - a child transferred from lessons at school with another teacher to private lessons with me. I asked specifically - as I always do in these situations - whether they had finished lessons with the school teacher, paid all fees due to the school etc. etc. and was assured by Mum that they had. Well, we started lessons and things were going reasonably well until little lass appears one day with a bigger violin. I was fairly astonished as I certainly hadn't asked them to go up a size. "My teacher at school said I needed a bigger violin" !! It's the only time (that I know of!) that I have been directly lied to like that as it turned out that they had actually just carried on with the school lessons. Like Allanah's pupil, they thought she would make faster progress with two lessons a week. It was the dishonesty that upset me, rather than the mistaken belief that two teachers, neither of whom knew about the other, would produce twice the result.