How to Teach a Musical Instrument Online: Create a Music Online Course

4 minute read

If you know how to play a musical instrument and you want to teach music online, it is time for you to create your music online course.

Music online courses can be very different from in-person classes, and if you want to bring your teaching online, it can feel confusing and overwhelming.

If this sounds like you, keep reading below to find out how to bring your music classes online, and learn from examples of other musicians and creators who did it successfully.

Teaching Music Online The Right Way

Online courses are great for a large number of reasons: they give you and your students flexibility, you can reach a much broader audience and scale your business easier and so on.

However, if you are a music teacher and you are used to in-person classes, you might feel skeptical about the effectiveness of teaching a musical instrument online.

This is because online courses lack that one-on-one component that allows you - the teacher - to really understand your students' progress and immediately provide guidance. So how can online courses achieve the same level of personal interaction as one-on-one classes?

create a music guitar online course with Heights Platform

At Heights Platform we developed an online course software specifically designed to help students learn, and our creators come from many different industries and niches, including creators who teach a musical instrument.

We had the pleasure to interview Laurie McCarriar, co-founder with Mary Lynn Michal of HD Homeland, an online course built with Heights Platform where they teach how to play a musical instrument called the Hammered Dulcimer.

With their hammered dulcimer courses, Laurie and Mary Lynn achieved great success and were able to reach thousands of students by teaching online. How did they manage to compensate for the lack of in-person guidance?

"Many students need a little hand-holding when it comes to navigating online learning. Fortunately, Heights Platform makes it easy."

To create a music online course that matches the quality of in-person classes, Laurie and Mary Lynn made sure to provide high-quality materials in their lessons (video and audio play a huge role with music online courses) and completed their online course lessons with online live meetings and even in-person retreats when possible.

Read The Full Story

Now that you how to make online music courses a powerful tool, let's see what you need to do in order to get started with teaching a musical instrument online:

Create a Music Online Course: Step by Step

When it comes to teaching a musical instrument online, there are certain aspects that you need to focus on, keep reading below to learn how to create your online course.

Step 1: Choose The Best Online Course Platform for Music Courses

To create a successful music online course, you need to look for an online course platform with certain features specifically designed for you.

Teaching music online requires you to use a lot of videos, with a high-quality player and audio. You also need an online course platform that gives you full flexibility to create an online program as you desire: organize your online courses, create different types of learning products and so on.

You might also want to check in with your students and assess their progress. Look out for a platform that lets you interact with your students and give them active assignments to improve their learning.

Heights Platform allows music teachers and creators to do all the things listed above and more: it is the only online course software that lets you create "Projects" for your students.

So for example at the end of your online course, you could set up a project where students have to submit their song or musical piece to you. With this feature, other students can potentially see other students' projects and interact with each other.

Step 2: Decide on Your Business Model

While with in-person music classes the business module is pretty straightforward - you meet with your students and they pay you after the lesson - with online courses things can get more complicated as there are more business models you can choose from.

You can decide to offer a standard online course, a series of lessons and modules that students can go through at their own time. You can choose to offer an online course, but schedule different launch strategies, so students can all join at the same time.

piano online course Heights Platform

You can also decide to offer a membership site, a continuous online course where students get access to your content and they pay a monthly fee. There are many ways to deliver content with online learning, and you could even do all of them at once!

Step 3: Create Qualitivative Video Content

Needless to say that music online courses need to have a great video and audio component. High-quality video is essential for students to comprehend the content of your lesson and be able to effectively reproduce it on their own.

If you are worried that you do not have the technical skills to record great videos, keep in mind that nowadays you can shoot professional videos simply by using a smartphone camera.

Heights Platform can also help you deliver outstanding videos, thanks to our fast, high-quality video player (plus there is no limit on video space).

Step 4: Promote Your Online Course

Once you have gotten started with Heights Platform, decided on which business model you are going to start with and put together your online course, it is time to launch and start promoting your program!

Promoting your online business can feel extremely challenging if you are not already an online marketer. Our suggestion is to stick with organic marketing instead of investing money in paid ads.

Start by leveraging word of mouth, let your family, friends and past students know that you are selling online courses. Share your program on social media and reach out personally to potential clients or local businesses.

If you don't know where to start, check out these articles on how to promote your online course:

Step 5 (For Best Results): Interact With Students 1:1

Interacting with your students is always a good practice. When it comes to music online courses - we believe that engaging with your students is extremely important.

Creating a connection with your students can help you better track their progress, gather helpful feedback about your teaching style and engage them even more with your content.

A simple act of interaction can make all the difference in the way your students perceive an online course. When a new student joins your programs, simply let them know that you are available if they need anything.

Heights Platform lets you create a discussion board where students can chat, ask you questions, and communicate with each other. An even better way to interact with your students can be holding weekly group live meetings or one-on-one online sessions.

Create Your Online Course Today

Post Topics: Build and Promote Your Course