Most music studios know two things about you before your first lesson:
Your name. And what you want to play.
That’s it. That’s the data. From there, the teacher opens a method book or pulls up a song, and the lessons begin.
We do it differently.
By the time you walk into your first lesson at Music Junkie Studios, your teacher already knows things about most students that some teachers won’t pick up on for six months. Not because we’re nosy. Because we’re paying attention to the right things from the start.
This is the first letter of the ADVANCE method: Assess. It’s how every student’s journey at MJS begins, and it’s the step that makes everything else actually work.
What Assess actually is
Assess isn’t a trial lesson. It isn’t a get-to-know-you session before the real lessons start. Nobody wants to pay for that, and nobody should have to.
Assess is a way of paying attention. It happens before your first lesson, during your first lesson, and honestly — it never fully stops. Good teachers are always assessing, always learning who the student in front of them is becoming.
But the most concentrated work happens before you ever play your first note with us. Most of it lives in our enrollment form.
What we ask, and what we’re really listening for
When a new student enrolls at MJS, we ask things most studios don’t. Some of our questions look like this:
Are there any special needs, health considerations, or accommodations we should be aware of to best support your learning experience? (Examples might include posture or shoulder/neck comfort, hand or wrist mobility, hearing differences, sensory sensitivities, learning differences, or anything else that could affect lessons.)
Read that question slowly. It’s doing a lot of work.
It’s saying: we know you have a body. We know that body might be different from someone else’s body. We know you might learn differently, hear differently, or carry physical things we’d hurt you by ignoring. Tell us now — not after we’ve already pushed you somewhere uncomfortable.
Most studios will never ask. They’ll teach the same posture, the same hand position, the same exercises to every student, and the students whose bodies don’t fit will quietly decide they “weren’t built for music.” They were. The teaching just wasn’t built for them.
We also ask things like:
What best describes your current experience? (Choose the one that feels closest to you.)
With six honest options — from “I’ve never played before” to “I play regularly and want to refine my technique.” Not three. Six. Because real students don’t fit on a beginner-intermediate-advanced scale, and the difference between “I know a few chords” and “I can play some songs but want to improve” matters a lot for how lesson one is going to feel.
And we ask:
Is there a song, style, or piece of music you’d love to learn? (This helps us make your lessons fun and personal right from the start.)
Because if I know on day one what you want to play — not what your parents think you should play, not what some method book wants you to play, but what you want — I can build everything around that. Even your first quick wins. Especially your first quick wins.
What else we’re trying to figure out
Beyond the form, there are a handful of things we’re trying to understand about every student. Some come up in the form. Some come up in the first lesson. Some take a few weeks. But this is the list:
Where your skills actually are right now. Honestly. Gently. Without making you feel small if you’re a beginner or overestimated if you’re not.
What excites you. Not just what instrument you picked — but what makes your eyes light up when you talk about music.
What you’re listening to. And, just as important: what music might you love but haven’t heard yet? That’s one of the most fun parts of teaching at MJS. Sometimes the song that unlocks a student is one they didn’t know existed.
How you learn. Some students need to see it. Some need to hear it. Some need to feel it physically before they understand it. Some need a metaphor. Knowing this changes everything about how a lesson unfolds.
How you want us to communicate with you. Direct? Gentle? Lots of feedback? A little at a time? You get to tell us.
Any past music lesson wounds. This one matters more than almost anything else. If you had a teacher who shamed you, embarrassed you, or made you feel like you didn’t belong in music — we want to know. Not so we can dwell on it. So we can make sure we don’t repeat it.
What this looks like in your first lesson
Here’s the thing: while all of this is happening, you’re also playing. You’re getting your first quick win. You’re walking out of lesson one having actually done something.
Assess and the start of teaching aren’t separate steps at MJS. They happen at the same time. While I’m watching how you hold the instrument, I’m also helping you make a sound on it. While I’m noticing how you respond to feedback, I’m also giving you something real to work on.
You don’t pay us to study you. You pay us to teach you. We just refuse to teach you blind.
Why this changes everything that comes next
Every other letter of the ADVANCE method depends on Assess being done well.
When we get to Decide — choosing your next goal together — we can only choose something that fits you if we actually know you. When we get to Acquire — building the new skill — we can only teach in a way that lands if we know how you learn. When we get to Nourish — letting you fall in love with what you just built — we can only get there if we picked something worth falling in love with in the first place.
Skip Assess, and the rest of the method collapses. Do it well, and every lesson after this one gets to be specific to you.
That’s the whole point. We’re not running you through a curriculum. We’re teaching you.
What’s coming next
Next up in the series: Decide. How we choose your next goal together — and why, the longer you’re with us, the less your teacher leads that conversation.
If you’ve ever wondered what a music studio that actually pays attention looks like, you’re starting to see it. And if you’re sitting there thinking “I wish I’d had this when I was a kid” — it’s not too late. We teach adults too. A lot of them.
Subscribe to the blog or follow us on Instagram (@musicjunkiestudios) so you don’t miss the next one.
— Kristi