FAQs

Musical Minds is designed for children aged 5-11 who are studying at Key Stage 1 & 2. We have worked with several primary schools across Merseyside to develop the musical talent of hundreds of primary school pupils.

All instrumental lessons are held during school time, from the beginning of lunch to the end of school. This ensures that core subjects taught in the morning are not missed.

There will be 36 lessons held across the academic year. Please see the calendar for more details.

Lessons are 20 minutes long and taught in pairs.

If a lesson is missed, it will be added to our catch-up week at the beginning of each half term.

Musical Minds supply all instruments during lesson time.

We strongly advise parents to purchase an instrument for pupils to practice on at home. Children can then bring these instruments to lessons for tutors to tune and set up properly.

Should you wish to purchase an instrument and wish to seek advice, please feel free to email us from the contacts section of our website.

We would also advice that each child purchases a file, so they have safe place to keep their music and handouts.

To cancel lessons please email us through our contacts page.

Please note once a half term has been paid for we can not make a refund. We therefore request that when cancelling lessons, parents give us two weeks advanced notice, prior to payment being taken.

there will be 36 lessons throughout the academic year, charged in 6 even payments of £52.20, with each payment accounting for 6 lessons.

Please note a yearly signing on fee of £12 will also be charged.

Payments are collected on the 1st of each second month, accounting for 6 half terms of lessons. The payments are collected in September, November, January, March, May and July.

Payments are collected on the 1st of each second month, accounting for 6 half terms of lessons. The payments are collected in September, November, January, March, May and July.

A one of yearly admin fee of £12 is collected during each summer break. This fee helps us to improve our service, by buying new instruments and improving our online system.

When we need to get your child or pupil a book or enter them for an exam, we will send a notification to your pupil’s dashboard. The notification will be highlighted to you by both SMS text and email. These notifications will require your confirmation code before we take money from your GoCardless account.

The confirmation code is the date of birth of the pupil, in form of day and month, backwards.  For example, a pupil who was born on 8th July would have a password of 7080.

Every half term, each pupil will receive a practice diary. At the end of each lesson, tutors will write a list of exercises and songs for pupils to practice at home. Each task matches up with a video on our website, with extra tuition on the piece. This helps each pupil to remember what they have been taught in lessons, and helps those parents who do not play an instrument to help their child with practice.

The app also includes backing tracks for children to play along with, once they have become confident with a new piece.

Practice is integral to any musician’s development, with lessons alone a pupil’s progress can be significantly impaired.

At Musical Minds, we believe in the ‘little and often’ approach to practice. Rather than pupils practicing for one extended session of an hour or so a week, we recommend beginners practicing for 20 minutes 3 times a week. This will help pupils to constantly improve and imbed new ideas and techniques throughout the week.

As pupils progress they can add in extra practices, and begin to extend their practices up to 30 minutes.

We recommend that parents make pupils a set timetable for their practice days. This will add structure and routine to practice.

It is a good idea that pupils put one of their practice days in the evening after their lesson, to prevent forgetting important information. In addition, practice in the two days leading up to the next lesson is recommended to ensure pupils are prepared.

We focus on teaching all pupils the fundamentals of music, including, rhythm, Tempo, pitch and melody. We do so in a fun and positive environment that caters to each individual pupil’s needs.

Children are taught according to our own syllabus, which combines our own step by step technical exercises, grade pieces, and famous songs.

At Musical Minds, we believe the grade system is a good structure for incremental learning, and as such a large part of our syllabus follows the grade books both with ABRSM and Rockschool. However, we also teach a large amount of music from outside the grade syllabus, including popular and fun songs.

We believe that grade exams are great for children’s confidence and offer a good opportunity for children to review their progress on their chosen instrument. However, we also understand that many children may not wish to sit exams. As such, we give our pupils the freedom of choice on whether to sit graded exams.

All lesson times and days appear on the dashboard of pupil profiles within our Web App.

If a pupil’s lesson time or day is changed, you will receive both an SMS text message and an email directing you to the dashboard to view the change.

All weeks of taught lessons appear on pupil’s dashboards in the form of a calendar.

If a pupil’s lesson time or day is changed, you will receive both an SMS text message and an email directing you to the dashboard to view the change.

If a pupil’s lesson time or day is changed, you will receive both an SMS text message and an email directing you to the dashboard to view the change.

The Username for pupils is their surname followed by the initial of their first name. for example, the username for Jane Smith would be smithj.

The password for each pupil is their date of birth in form of day and month. For example, a pupil who was born on 8th July would have a password of 0807.