As you embark on your musical journey, you will want to have a personal instrument for practicing at home. This could be as simple as a practice pad and drum sticks, or as elaborate as a drum set. For virtual lessons, you will need to have something to play on your end, so a practice pad may be a good place to start while you are deciding on your drum set up. Feel free to ask your teacher for advice. If you don’t have your own instrument yet, let us know when setting up your lessons so we can advise you.

While you don’t need to have any tools or instruments to learn to sing, it is helpful to have a piano to guide you and accompany you. Most of our voice teachers will use a piano during your lesson to support you. At home, if you don’t have a piano, you could consider purchasing a small, inexpensive piano keyboard to use while practicing singing. This could be useful for playing the first note of a song, so you know which pitch to sing, and for checking pitches as you sing. When you are having trouble with a pitch, you could check it on the piano to see - how high is this note? Is this one of the notes I often have trouble with? And that can help inform your practice.

The main thing you need to learn an instrument is time and dedication. You can learn to play any instrument when you set aside the time to do it. That said, it could be easier for someone to learn an instrument if they have already learned another instrument. Many musicians start out on piano at a young age, and then learn other instruments later. The piano is a great instrument for developing a strong foundation in music because it’s easy to see music concepts laid out on the keyboard. Also, musicians who have learned a string instrument will have an easier time learning other string instruments. That’s because most string instruments use similar finger techniques, so a lot of the technical skills learned on one instrument could transfer to another. Other traits that can positively influence musical study are if the student naturally has good finger dexterity, if they can quickly memorize music, or if they have been exposed to music a lot through family members who are musicians. But even when a student has none of these advantages, that’s ok - all it really takes to learn an instrument is time and dedication - and enjoyment - for success!

Yes, we love getting our student’s stage time! At Music Junction, we think it’s very important to perform whenever you can, to get the most out of your lessons, and have a well-rounded experience - and because music is meant to be shared! Your teacher will coach you on performance techniques and make sure you have songs ready to perform. Music Junction has 4 recitals every year that are either virtual or in-person, so students can have frequent opportunities to perform. We recommend students always have a recital song choice to work on in their lessons, to polish for each upcoming recital. These recital choices can be used to create a song list of pieces to perform for other live performances, so you always have something on hand to perform whenever the opportunity arises!

The piano is one of the easiest instruments to get started on, due to the visual layout of the keys, and how easy it is to push down the keys. For this reason, we recommend piano lessons even as early as 4 years of age. Adult students can also benefit from the ease of getting started on piano. It is easy to play melody lines on the piano with little or no training, which is often how beginner students use the instrument. Playing chords and more elaborate multi-note arrangements come later on piano. Guitar and ukulele could also be considered easy in a different way because it’s easy to play chords on these instruments. The nice thing about playing chords is that many songs use only a few repeated chords for an entire section, while the melody note is constantly changing. So learning 4 chords on the ukulele could give you the capability to perform an entire song. To perform the song, you would need to add the melody line by singing it. For young students, we recommend starting guitar no earlier than 7 or 8 years of age, because you need more finger strength than piano. Ukulele requires less strength and can be learned even earlier. Adults can also consider the ukulele as an easier string instrument to start on than guitar, since it’s easier to press down the strings, and there are only 4 strings instead of 6.

Yes, definitely! Learning more than one instrument together can actually help you learn both of them faster because what you learn on one will help you with the other. One great approach could be to pair singing with piano, guitar, or ukulele, so you can play and sing together. If you like to sing, learning a second instrument can be extra fun if you get to sing with it.

Your teacher will have a plan for your first lesson, including new student orientation, and an instrument introduction or review to get you started. You will need your instrument of course, but if you don’t have one yet, that’s ok, just make sure to let us know in advance so your teacher can be prepared. When you are doing in-person piano lessons, you won’t need to bring an instrument, because you and your teacher will share a piano in one of our teaching rooms. If you are taking virtual lessons, it would be good to have a notebook handy to take notes. For in-person lessons, we will provide you with one. If you have already taken lessons before, please bring any lesson books you have worked with in the past, so you and your teacher can review them and see what would be best for going forward. You could also prepare a song that you have worked on in the past, for your teacher to review with you, to use as a jumping-off point for your first lesson. For total beginner students, we have our favorite lesson books we recommend, and we will arrange for them to be ordered for you. You will normally receive them in your first or second lesson. Your first Music Junction lesson is an exciting time, where you get to enjoy the anticipation of everything you will learn, and how far you will go, so enjoy it!