Most of the music teachers we know are as busy as they want to be and turning away students, too. They fit in performances when they can, or perhaps they've given up performing.

Where do they get their students? Mostly word of mouth. Mark and Mary Ann both started at a music school, and their highly successful students are the best advertising they could ever want. Debbie's private students come from the congregation of the church where she directs, or the classrooms of the school where she teaches. When Stacy left the stage for the studio, she had fans lining up to study with her.

That's fine for established musicians. What about the newcomers? Josepha's been out of school for just about two years, and has had her first conducting job for one year. She still relies on her day job. She can't rely on word of mouth for all her students.

So she is trying out a website for marketing. Josepha's site was designed by a company called SharpHue. We'll be following the progress of the site -- and her career -- in these pages.

Music is a language. I don't mean this in the abstract "the Language of Flowers" kind of way, I mean it literally. The basic ideas of opposites (loud v. soft, fast v. slow, et al) are like learning the basic sounds of your native tongue. Learning the specific parts of music (measures, note names, rest names) is like learning words of your language. Learning to read music (time signatures, key signature and the like) is like learning to construct sentences.

The process of learning music is a cumulative one.

Activities for Your Itty-Bitties
- Objective: Recognize the differences in loud, soft, fast, slow, high and low.
- Materials: Two adult helpers, one sign with a picture of a Quail and one that has a picture of Lion, assorted audio clips.
- Setup: Have each adult take a sign and stand on opposite sides of the room. Have the children stand in the middle of the adults. Play a clip of a highway and have the children move either to the Quiet Quail or the Loud Lion depending on how loud it is. Repeat this with clips of parks, solo flutes, orchestras and whatever else you can find.

You can follow up by using a Venn Diagram to catagorize your guided listening clips into groups.