As you embark on your musical journey, you will want to have a personal instrument for practicing at home. For your first few in-person lessons, it is possible to get by without having an instrument ready. This is especially true for in-person piano lessons, where normally the teacher and student will share the keyboard at our school. For virtual lessons, it will be best to have your instrument ready right from the start. If you don’t have your own instrument yet, let us know when setting up your lessons so we can advise you on rental and purchase options. You can use a piano keyboard, or get an acoustic piano, whatever fits your needs!

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, there are some skills or traits that can make it easier to learn an instrument. For example, 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, all learning an instrument really needs is time and dedication - and enjoyment - for success!

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 notes. 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 it requires 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!

Yes, you will be assigned to one music teacher for your lessons, who will take on overseeing your studies ongoingly. On the few occasions that your teacher may be sick or on vacation, we will arrange for a Guest teacher to work with you in their place. Working with a Guest teacher is a special opportunity to get a 2nd set of eyes on your studies, and we encourage you to ask them for their unique feedback when you get the opportunity, so that you can incorporate that back into your studies with your primary teacher. Guest teachers are part of our highly qualified Music Junction teaching team, just like your primary teacher.

Yes, we can help students with suggestions and advice to either purchase an instrument or rent one. For piano rentals, we recommend Hollywood Piano Co. in Burbank, who has rentals available for as low as $29/mo. We have a long history with this reputable local piano store, so we trust them to take care of our students