Why are music lessons so expensive?

By: peterson

We 're going to try to explain the background, but first of all, we need to state that our point of view is anything but objective while we've been in this profession for a while now.

First of all, you need to understand what it takes to be a good instrumental or vocal teacher. Even though it might look like everyone could teach beginners, actually getting a Bachelor of Performance degree is a lot harder than you might think. If we start from an educational point of view, musicians are one of the rare people who need to complete a full 4 years course in order to obtain a Bachelor of Honors degree.

That Honorary part comes from the fact that in order to get it, you need to spend an enormous amount of extra hours (that's a simple explanation of the modules and credits, but let's leave it like that for a while). Not to mention that just passing the auditions and getting a place at a good music college or university is as selective as going to Cambridge or Oxford (sometimes even more so). In a lot of cases, you'll also come across a teacher who obtained not only a bachelor's degree but also a master's degree, which is again very selective and a big time and money investment.

At the Peterson Piano Institute, we are currently applying our pay scale to the ground rule of education. We would not dare to say that this is right or wrong, whereas we believe that this is a very complicated subject. But the bottom line is that classical musicians who hold different degrees are highly educated people, which means that their market price is higher than the average.

In conclusion, we would say that instrumental lessons are worth every baht, when you have the right teacher, and when you take half the responsibility for improvement, but you definitely need both. We do agree that it places a strain on the budget of the family.