What’s New?

Lesson notes

Pre­vi­ous­ly les­son notes were attached to indi­vid­ual les­son appoint­ments in the “Lessons” tab of Tunekey.

Now I’ll main­tain a sin­gle Google Doc for each stu­dent, with a chrono­log­i­cal record of notes I’ve tak­en dur­ing each les­son and sug­gest­ed assign­ments, and share it with stu­dents (and par­ents, as applic­a­ble).  This shared Doc will be in the same fold­er as oth­er shared resources (see below).

Online resources

Resources that pre­vi­ous­ly were avail­able in the “Mate­ri­als” tab of Tunekey have now been moved to indi­vid­ual stu­dent fold­ers shared on Google Dri­ve.  Your fold­er will be named as your first and last name fol­lowed by “les­son files”—e.g., a stu­dent named Chris Smith would look for a fold­er called “Chris Smith les­son files.”

You can access these resources in any of sev­er­al ways:

1. Your fold­er should always appear in the “Shared with me” sec­tion of Google Dri­ve (brows­er or app)
2. If you “star” your fold­er (right-click the fold­er, then choose Organize→Add to starred), it will also appear in the “Starred” sec­tion of your Google Dri­ve (which may be eas­i­er to nav­i­gate than your “Shared with me” sec­tion).
3. I’ve also added a mod­ule to the Stu­dent Resources page of my web­site that will show you the con­tents of your les­son files fold­er as long as you are logged in to my site.  (Note: If you’re not sure how to log in to my site, take a look at Step 3 of the New Stu­dent Check­list.)

Recurring lessons

In TuneKey your week­ly lessons were sched­uled to repeat indef­i­nite­ly, so that in prin­ci­ple you could can­cel or resched­ule a les­son that was­n’t sched­uled to hap­pen until months in the future.

Since switch­ing to Acu­ity, on or near the first day of each cal­en­dar month I’ll be sched­ul­ing recur­ring lessons out 3 months into the future, and you’ll get a con­fir­ma­tion email each time I add new lessons to the cal­en­dar that includes links to change or can­cel any new appoint­ments.

This makes it some­what less cum­ber­some if we need to change the day or time of your reg­u­lar appointment—receiving 52 con­fir­ma­tion emails for a year’s worth of changed appoint­ments could be over­whelm­ing!

Holidays & planned absences

Before I sched­ule new lessons, I will already have blocked off hol­i­days and oth­er planned absences from the Acu­ity cal­en­dar, so you’ll nev­er see a les­son sched­uled, e.g., for Memo­r­i­al Day or June­teenth.

Because so many of us run on autopi­lot, though, I will send out an email reminder of upcom­ing hol­i­days and planned absences about a month in advance.

Rescheduling lessons

Pre­vi­ous­ly stu­dents would (at least in the­o­ry) use the TuneKey app to select a les­son appoint­ment they want­ed to change, then sub­mit a request for a new time and wait for me to con­firm the request.

Acu­ity allows me to define my avail­abil­i­ty and the cri­te­ria I use for con­firm­ing resched­uled appoint­ments, so stu­dents can sim­ply vis­it my online Sched­uler while logged into their Acu­ity client account, and the sys­tem will allow you to select from a list of avail­able resched­ul­ing options and make the change your­self in just a few clicks.

(Note: If you’re not sure how to log in to your Acu­ity client account, take a look at Step 1 of the New Stu­dent Check­list.)

Subscription renewal dates

In the pre­vi­ous sys­tem, all Sub­scrip­tion Plan par­tic­i­pants were billed on the last day of the cal­en­dar month.

In Acu­ity your sub­scrip­tion can begin on any day of the month, and enti­tles you to up to 5 lessons, plus (as avail­able) a Vocal Per­for­mance Mas­ter­class and the Spring Stu­dio Show­case, dur­ing the “term” before the sub­scrip­tion next renews.

I’ve car­ried over the “1st-of-the-month” renew­al dates for all cur­rent stu­dents, but if you’d pre­fer a dif­fer­ent renew­al date just let me know.

Music purchases

Pre­vi­ous­ly, if I pur­chased music on your behalf at any point dur­ing the month, I would sim­ply add the charge for that pur­chase to the fol­low­ing mon­th’s invoice.  This was con­ve­nient for me but often con­fus­ing, as the charge would show up some­times weeks after the pur­chase.

Now when I make a pur­chase to be reim­bursed, I will cre­ate an invoice in Acu­ity and send it to you, usu­al­ly with­in 24 hours of the ini­tial pur­chase.  These invoic­es will not be includ­ed in sub­scrip­tion tuition, and must be paid sep­a­rate­ly.