The Commitments

Tuition

• $500 paid upfront, or 10 installments of $55 ($550 total). We offer a family maximum payment of $1,250. If you have a 3rd child (or more) that you wish to enroll, please enroll your first two using the forms below and contact us about your other children. We’ll provide you with a discounted link for the 3rd child and would waive fees for a 4th (or more!)

Attendance and School Work

• Classes take place during school hours. Students are pulled from class for approximately 45minutes once per week. Students are grouped by ability level and rotated through a schedule that ensures they will not miss the same time period each week. Students are responsible for knowing their group and specified class time each week. Students are also responsible for making up any missed school work. Teachers work with us to ensure minimal disruption and difficulty caused by academic conflict, and we allow some absences from our classes if necessary for students to maintain academic success.

Full-Year Commitment

• Learning an instrument takes time, patience, and consistency. We ask families to commit to the entire school year to ensure meaningful progress and program continuity.

Instrument

• Students will need their own instrument to participate. We HIGHLY recommend going with the instrument the student comes home excited about from Instrument Demonstration Day. We have a very special routine we go through that day that is designed to steer students towards a choice that will work well for them. With 12 years of experience bringing kids through this program, we say with confidence that students are much more successful on instruments they are excited about.

• We recommend renting your instrument through our partner, Music and Arts. They offer high quality instruments, a fantastic Rent-To-Own program, and the best repair/replacement network available. This is the best way to invest in a good instrument without overcommitting. More information is available at tolbertmusic.net/rental.

• If you have an instrument at home, let’s start there! We will give you our best assessment of it’s usability and will recommend you get it fixed or rent a new one if necessary.

• Important: Please do not purchase inexpensive instruments online (e.g., Amazon). These instruments often fail quickly and cannot be repaired.

  • The options are:

    Flute, Clarinet, Oboe, Saxophone, Trumpet, French Horn, Trombone, Baritone/Euphonium, Violin, Viola, Cello, Bass, and Percussion.

• Maintenance: All instruments require some degree of ongoing maintenance. Nothing is difficult or expensive, and we will walk you through the process when it is time. It’s important for you to know that if you do not perform the maintenance, it can end up requiring more expensive repair, and can even cause permanent damage!

Additional Costs

• You will be asked to purchase sheet music, basic instrument accessories, a music stand for practice, and other miscellaneous items along the way. Nothing is wildly expensive, but we want you fully informed. All instruments include various recurring costs.

Practice Expectations

• Most conventional programs do not start instrumental learning until 4th or 5th grade, and none combine all instruments together into one group like we do. What we ask of our students is challenging, but we have been seeing them succeed for over 12 years! The key is getting students to practice their instrument at home. This is a building process for which we will provide guidance, but parent follow-through is essential to keep students accountable, and ultimately for them to have a successful and enjoyable experience.

Use this forms to enroll your student:

If you have more than one student, use the form, refresh the page, and use it again.