Lesson length matches attention span. A six-year-old cannot use a full hour, and pretending otherwise wastes the second half of it - new young beginners start at thirty minutes, with forty-five or sixty coming later as reading, repertoire and stamina grow. Adult beginners usually take forty-five minutes from the start, with no separate track, just a starting point that respects a longer attention span.
Practice is the one thing that actually determines whether lessons work, and the honest version is that fifteen focused minutes on most days beats an hour crammed in the night before a lesson. A parent's job is a consistent time and place, not supervising technique - that is what the lesson is for. Students who quit almost always quit because practice never had a home in the week, not because the instrument was too hard.
We hold two recitals a year, one in winter and one in early summer. Performing is encouraged because it gives practice a purpose, but it is never required - a nervous student pushed onto a stage is how a studio loses students, and that helps nobody.
Your slot is held whether you use it or not, the same way a reservation works, so a missed lesson cannot simply be refunded. What we offer instead is a shared swap list of other students' open slots that week, plus a small number of make-up credits per term for illness or travel.
For students who want it, optional structure is available: graded exam syllabi to work toward, support for school band or orchestra parts, and theory alongside playing. None of it is required to keep your slot.
