Tips to engage music students in between lessons (featuring Tonara Studio)

Being a music teacher is a demanding profession. Not only do you need to teach, but you also need to personalize each lesson for your music students. Learn their individual needs and wants, and monitor their progress in between lessons. If you’re an experienced music teacher, then you know this takes up A LOT of time and energy — but it’s always worth it in the end. So to help you with your chaotic schedule, we’ve teamed up with Tonara to share 5 tips to engage music students in between lessons, and move along in their musical journey more effectively! 

Use fun rewards

Having a reward system is one great tip to engage music students in between lessons — it keeps the younger ones more entertained, enthusiastic about practice, and motivates them to keep going because they know there is something waiting for them at their next lesson. 

One reward system you can use is giving students either stickers, pencils, or small candies. With these material items, you can make it fun by making the rewards themed. You can even allow the opportunity to build a collection of all the prizes that are earned. For example, you can choose to do a theme of different music genres with the stickers or see how many pencils each student can collect by the end of the year. Once the year ends, it’s fun to look back at all the pencils that each student has collected and see the progress that they’ve made in just that year!

Another reward system you can use is to create a bit of friendly competition between all the students, in your studio, with a leaderboard. With Tonara Studio, your students can log their practice and earn points. The more they practice, the higher they climb on the leaderboard. This is one of the effective tips to engage music students in between lessons. You can run a competition for a week or a month, see who gets to the top of the leaderboard. Give them a fun reward like another set of stickers. You can even offer something more special, like an ice cream party for the next lesson. 

Teach them to take it in a lighter vein

Although having some competition in your studio might sound scary, it shouldn’t be. Remind your students that although it’s fun to see who is at the top of the leaderboard, consistent practice is more important for improving their playing than just earning points. Furthermore, students can compete with themselves. A leaderboard can inspire them to practice more this week than the last and reach a higher spot. Emphasize that friendly competition is meant to motivate them to practice more and continue improving. 

Include fun pieces

As you don’t see your students daily, you hope that they’ll practice consistently for about 30 minutes a day. Unfortunately, not all music students are eager to go home and do this every day. 

One of the greatest tips to engage your music students in between lessons is to assign a fun piece or exercise for them to practice alongside other materials. 

Maybe you want to have them start practicing a piece that they’ve been wanting to learn for a while. Or maybe it’s a very popular song that they’re singing all the time and now have the opportunity to learn. 

Keep track of their practice progress

You’ve had your lesson, and you’ve given your students assignments that they will need to practice. But how will you know if they practice or not? Unfortunately, many teachers will have to wait until the next lesson to find out. This results in spending the first part of the class going over what was learned last week and the second half of it teaching the new materials. That’s where Tonara Studio comes in handy. 

With Tonara Studio, you can easily manage your studio and motivate your music students to practice more in between lessons, while making practice more fun and engaging! 

It rewards students with points, a spot on the leaderboard, stickers, and more based on practice duration and frequency. These fun incentives push students to practice more! In addition, the app listens to their playing and tracks details like practice days, duration, assignment completion. This information is stored and shared with you, so you can see each student’s progress when you log on. You can also message students within the app to give them an extra boost or help them out with a tough section they’re getting stuck at!

By the time the lesson comes, focus on the sections the student is struggling with and advance their training!

Get their parents involved

We’ve gone over how to make practice more fun for the students and how you can track their practice progress. It’s now time to get their parents involved as well! Instead of having the parents check-in on the practice sessions, you can use Tonara Studio for this. Get the parents involved differently but making it a fun experience for the child and parents! 

Another fun way to involve your students’ parents is by creating a small competition between the parents to see who can complete a section of a piece faster and more accurately. It helps get all of your students and parents involved. It also allows parents to stay updated with their children’s training without constantly asking for updates or checking the Tonara Studio app. 

You can think of it as a win-win-win solution! 

Use metronomes to your advantage

During the lesson, you likely have a metronome in your class or study, making it easy and convenient to use. But what happens when your student goes home? They certainly can’t take your metronome with them…

That’s where Soundbrenner comes in to save the day! We offer a variety of wearable products, so finding the right one that fits you and your students’ needs should be easy. 

Core 2

The Core 2 offers a vibrating metronome, so it won’t cause too much distraction; a contact tuner, db meter, smartphone notifications, multi-day battery life, and it’s splash resistant. Plus, it has a sleek design, and you can connect the watch to our free metronome app for additional customization and even DAW synchronization. 

Pulse

The Pulse offers a vibrating metronome for haptic learning and multiplayer sync, allowing you and your student to sync up. You can also connect the watch with Soundbrenner’s app. Both devices are cross-play enabled, meaning you sync up to 5 Pulses or Cores (or a mix of both) so everyone can play at the same tempo.

Both devices are great options to engage music students in between lessons, helping them stay in time during lessons, while enabling them to properly work on their practice assignments before their next lesson. Rather than skipping them because they don’t have a metronome. 

What’s even better is that for music teachers and educators, Soundbrenner offers an exclusive affiliate program with huge discounts on their wearables. You will also be able to earn money by referring Soundbrenner products to your students. Not having a metronome is no longer an excuse! For more information on our teacher affiliate program,

This blog post is in collaboration with Tonara. 

About Tonara: 

Tonara is a music education company looking to harness the power of technology to move music education forward. Their flagship app and platform motivates, while engages, music students to practice. It enables their teachers to track practice sessions and keep them engaged in between lessons. Tonara Connect, their music education marketplace, makes it easier for students to find the right teacher for their learning needs, and for teachers to promote their online and local music lesson studios.