I come to this topic from the point of view of both a consumer and provider of music lessons. I am a consumer in the sense that I had the good fortune in my student days to be taught by some of the most respected musicians in their fields. A provider in that I have now been a teacher of musical instruments for over 35 years and have taught thousands of pupils in that time.
As a student I was grateful for the fact that I was able to tap-in to such unique and valuable expertise and guidance. I always found it frustrating though, between one lesson and the next, that there would be no one on hand to offer help when I needed it the most.
As a teacher I quickly became aware of that exact same problem, but in reverse.
For any pupil who decides to learn to play an instrument the format tends to be fairly standard: one lesson per week for an agreed length of time. This lesson length would be perhaps most commonly in the region of half an hour or an hour. Believe it or not, when I was teaching in schools it wasn