Personal one to one attention for children over the age of 8 up to 12. Tuition from qualified tutors is available in a variety of levels and genres for GUITAR and KEYBOARD.

Ethos Behind Individual Teaching

I had individual music tuition for years as a kid and right through most of my teenage years as well. At the risk of sounding ungrateful, what a bore it was! The same story every week...sit down, read the dots on the page and play them. Intimidating stuff for a little person I can tell you! 'No such thing as 'playing by ear' or enjoying myself back then!

And for many of us it was the same. Yeah, O.K., we learnt a lot of music theory, but why couldn't it be fun? Why couldn't we do a bit of 'jamming'? ‘Play a bit of music just for the sheer fun of it? (I' m surprised I stuck at it for so long!) I decided then that music need not be taught that way. So I grew up, became a music teacher, and after speaking to many people who had a similar experience, I set about looking for a better way to teach music, one that was FUN for kids, first and foremost.

After 13 years of teaching music, researching, designing education programmes and testing my theories, the results have spoken for themselves. Showing kids that music is fun, motivates them. They WANT to learn more. The results revealed that when children are keen enough to learn, they can practically teach themselves (...and then, by the way, go on to teach the teacher all sorts of interesting things she's never thought of!!) They begin to love playing music.

The second aim of the individual lessons is to maintain a balance between keeping the love of playing music alive, (i.e. keeping the motivation going), and the development of good technique... with a bit of music theory thrown in along the way at a gentle pace! In this way, pupils learn for themselves the value of regular practice (instead of being pushed into it as many of us were), and therefore developing the necessary self discipline so very needed if one is going to continue to love playing the instrument. Self-discipline is difficult for the best of us...especially for the young musician, but if eased into it, it's not so challenging.

So each individual student's programme is designed especially and individually for that particular student, and is totally centred around the child's needs and desires. To use a common educational term, we use the 'child-centred approach'. In order to achieve this, constant assessments, evaluation and planning is done to ensure all goals and aims are being met.

I also like to work with the Latin translation of education, 'educare'... to draw out, i.e. to draw out the music, which is already within each student. At FOLKIST MUSIC we believe that music is an EXPRESSIVE ART and a COMMUNICATION ART. So the lessons have a fair emphasis on creativity and composition and developing skills in a FUN way, which ultimately lead to the pupil's freedom of self-expression and communication through music.

Karen Jones
(Diploma in Teaching)
FOLKIST Director and Tutor

The current tuition fee is displayed on our fees page.

Please click link to view our page on how to enrol.

Lessons are held in the Children’s Music Centre.

Lessons are generally held once a week, as this seems to be long enough to allow enough time to practice and not feel too pressured, and yet, short enough to encourage that routine and continuity which is all so important to develop as a young musician.

A suitable time and day for the lessons can be personally negotiated and thereafter a 50-minute time slot is then booked and allocated to that pupil.

Please contact the Centre for more information.