Common questions.
Quick answers to the things students ask most often. If your question isn’t here, email nick@musicwithnick.com and you’ll get a real answer.
Quick answers to the things students ask most often. If your question isn’t here, email nick@musicwithnick.com and you’ll get a real answer.
Yes. Complete beginners are welcome. Lessons are built around the music you actually want to play, starting from your first lesson, no slogging through method books for six months before you get to enjoy yourself.
Every lesson is 50 minutes, with a 10-minute buffer between students for lesson notes, planning the next session, and resetting the room. The buffer is deliberate. It’s how your teacher arrives fully ready for your lesson instead of catching up from the one before. In person at the Ukrainian Village studio by default, with Zoom for weeks you’re traveling or unwell. Same rate, same structure either way.
In person is the default, and it’s better: a real acoustic piano, Fender Rhodes, Hammond B3, and a recording setup, and for voice, live accompaniment in the room. Zoom is there for the weeks you’re traveling or under the weather, so a week away never has to mean a missed lesson. Same rate, same structure, same teacher either way.
Yes, and lots of students do. You can split your lessons across both instruments, or alternate weeks. Just let me know what you want to work on.
With 24+ hours notice, your lesson moves to another opening that same week when one exists; otherwise it’s used. Late cancellations and no-shows count as a used lesson. Sick? Tell me and stay home — illness is always handled, whatever the notice.
The studio closes for major holidays and a few weeks a year, posted in advance on the schedule page. A closed week simply doesn’t use a lesson; the credit rolls over, so you’re never paying for a week the studio is closed.
Flex 4-Pack and single-lesson credits are valid for one year from purchase. That’s long enough to absorb a vacation or a sick week, short enough that you’ll actually finish what you started. If life intervenes near the end of your year, talk to me. We’ll figure it out.
One lesson a week at a regular time that’s yours, $100 a lesson, billed $400 every 4 weeks, for as long as you like. No term, nothing to renew, cancel anytime before your next payment. Unused lessons roll over, and if the first four lessons aren’t working you owe nothing more. Full details on the How Enrollment Works page.
Yes. Many students start with a single lesson or a Flex 4-Pack and go weekly once it clicks. You can switch anytime — your 4-week billing simply starts from the day you do — and flex credits stay valid even after you go weekly.
Yes, a quiet one. Refer a friend who joins as a weekly student, and once they’re a month in, you get a lesson on me.
Teen students (roughly 11+) are welcome. For younger children, you’d be better served by a teacher whose practice is built specifically around early-childhood music education.
Show up. Bring music you want to work on if you have any in mind, but you don’t have to. The first lesson is about getting a sense of where you are and what you actually want to do. We figure out the path together from there.
These are the studio hours, full stop. Friday through Sunday are reserved for performing and other work. If those hours don’t work for your schedule, this isn’t the right studio for you, and that’s okay.
Almost certainly not. A large share of the studio is adults who started in their 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond, many after decades away from an instrument. Adults often learn faster than kids because they know what they want to play and why. It is genuinely not too late. Here is a realistic look at how long it takes.
That is the norm, not the exception. There is no audition and nothing to prepare. Rusty fragments and wrong notes are the raw material of every lesson, and after teaching adults privately since 2012 there is no fumble that hasn’t been heard before, usually that same week. The $25 trial walks through exactly what to expect.
The honest way to find out is the $25 trial before committing to anything. It is a real 30-minute lesson, not a sales pitch: you learn something, get an honest read on your starting point and timeline, and see whether it is a fit. Discovering it is not right for $25 beats finding out three months in. Here is how lesson pricing compares across Chicago.
Yes. The students who progress are not the ones with the most time, they are the ones with a system that survives a real calendar: about 20 focused minutes, five days a week, with the weekly lesson doing the planning. Here is the full practice system for busy adults.
Piano students start with the $25, 30-minute trial lesson. Voice students book their first lesson directly — no audition, no preparation, just singing. Then, if it clicks, go weekly. No commitment beyond the first step.