When I first signed up for Music Teacher’s Helper, I needed a way to manage the full range of musical activities that I engage in. After some experimentation, I discovered a few methods of using the functionality of MTH to keep track of not just my teaching, but performing, administrating, and a number of other musical activities that I needed to manage under one roof. The first step in this process requires upsizing the “student list” to encompass a lot more than students and create the basis for being able to flexibly schedule your entire musical life in the MTH calendar. Here’s how you can do it: [···]
One of the most satisfying aspects of being a working musician and teacher is the sheer variety and depth of activities that I participate in on a regular basis. On this blog, Ed Pearlman has already written a very insightful article on the value of keeping up these types of activities in The Performing Teacher. The demands of a busy schedule and the difficulties of scheduling, contact management, and invoicing have meant that I have traditionally used a hodge-podge of devices, software, and services to keep track of my professional life.
Fortunately, at the 2007 MTNA Collaborative Conference in Toronto I stumbled upon the Music Teacher’s Helper booth, where I first learned that there was an easy-to-use integrated solution for studio management. However, my problem was that I needed a solution not just for teaching, but for keeping track of my entire musical life, which includes examining, adjudicating, committee work, attending workshops, playing for auditions, doing recordings, and performing with a large cast of musicians and companies.
So when I bit the bullet earlier this year and ordered my Platinum MTH account, one of the things that I found most attractive about the plan was that the number of active students was listed as “unlimited”, fully intending to exercise that option. My goal was to find a way to utilize the various billing, scheduling, invoicing and contact services available on MTH to organize my musical life under one roof.
And I figured out how.
This is an introductory posting to a multi-part series on how to make the features of Music Teacher’s Helper work for your own unique musical life. Articles to follow will deal with step-by-step tips, tricks, hacks, and work-arounds on subjects such as:
- Adding organizations and groups as part of your student list
- Maximizing the possibilities of event scheduling
- Customizing email features to reach people (including yourself) when you want, or not at all
- Extend the scope of your MTH website through adding pages and embedding stuff
- Track income from students, organizations, and employers
- Elementary task management (based on some ideas previously mentioned by Ronnie Currey)
Comments about your own ways of using MTH are welcome throughout the series. Stay tuned for Part 1…