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Report structures

The music lesson report.

A music lesson report names bars rather than pieces. The four sections are concepts covered, progress, homework and next focus, and the homework section is a practice instruction specific enough to follow without a teacher in the room.

Practice between lessons is the whole of the job, and it fails for one reason: the instruction was play the piece. A student who plays the piece from the top every day gets very good at the first eight bars and no better at the rest of it. A music report earns its keep by naming the bars, the tempo and the number of times, which is an instruction a twelve year old can follow on a Wednesday without anybody standing over them.

01The four sections

The four names this kind of work gets, and nothing to fill in.

  1. 01Concepts covered
  2. 02Progress
  3. 03Homework
  4. 04Next focus

You are not choosing this from a gallery. You answer one question when you sign up and these four become the shape every comes back in. Any of them can be renamed, added to or removed, and your version is what you get from then on.

02A finished report

Not a blank table. The document, written out.

Invented student: Ella, 12, grade 4 piano, weekly lesson, session 14.

Concepts covered
Bars 17 to 24 of the Burgmuller, hands separately then together at half speed. Also two minutes of scales in the key it modulates to, which is where the wrong notes were coming from.
Progress
Hands together through bars 17 to 24 at 60 without stopping, which she could not do at all last week. The left hand is still leading by a fraction at the bar 20 change, and she hears it herself now, which is new.
Homework
Bars 17 to 24 only, five times a day at 60, hands together. Do not play the piece from the top this week. Two minutes of the scale before each go.
Next focus
Take 17 to 24 to 76 and join it to bar 16, so the section stops being an island.

Every person, session and number above was written for this page. No real client is shown. The four section names are not samples: they are the sections the product fills in today.

03What clients ask for

Three things the reader of this report is actually looking for.

  • What their child should actually practise, in a form they can read out at the piano.
  • Whether the exam piece is on track, which is a question about weeks remaining and not about talent.
  • How long practice should take, so it can be timetabled against everything else in the week.

04What goes wrong

Four mistakes, and each one costs a renewal rather than a mark.

  • Practise the piece. It is the single most common instruction in music teaching and it is the reason nothing improves past bar eight.
  • No tempo and no count. Five times at 60 is a task, more practice is a mood.
  • Reporting the piece rather than the passage, which hides the fact that the same eight bars have been the problem for a month.
  • Saying nothing about what improved, which leaves a parent with a bill and a feeling.

05How it gets written

Five steps, and four of them take no time at all.

  1. 01Record the session

    Record on a phone, a laptop or the call software you already work on, with everybody in the session having agreed out loud first.

  2. 02Upload the recording

    Upload the file when the session ends, or paste a transcript if your call software already made one.

  3. 03Read the draft

    The draft comes back in about a minute, in the four sections: Concepts covered, Progress, Homework, Next focus.

  4. 04Correct it

    Change anything that is wrong and add anything the recording missed. Nothing goes anywhere until you have done this.

  5. 05Send it

    It goes to the client under your own name and stays on their own page with every report before it.

06Where this came from

Two sources outside this company.

Nearby

Try it on one session

Bring one recording and read what comes back in these four sections. No account and no card, and the 7 day trial needs no card either.