New undergraduate and postgraduate students joining Royal Holloway in September 2023 must meet and enrol with Nathan James Dearden (Performance Manager) anytime between 9.00am and 5.00pm on Tuesday, 19 September 2023 and Wednesday, 20 September 2023.  Your enrolment meeting will take place either on MS Teams, Zoom, or in-person (dependent on the student's preference). There you will be allocated an Instrumental or Vocal Tutor and will be spoken through the Lesson Agreement, plus find out when your first lesson will be. Students must bring and/or show proof of their Grade 7/8 attainment to this session, as per the module requirements for first-year performance modules.  

Book now

Please CLICK HERE to schedule your enolment meeting (link embedded). 

How many lessons should I expect to have?

Each student is assigned a certain amount of lessons, dependent on the music performance module they are enrolled onto:

• MU1118 – 18 lessons of 45 minutes’ duration, taken at regular weekly intervals during Terms 1 and 2.
• MU2205 – 16 lessons of 45 minutes’ duration, taken at regular weekly intervals during Terms 1 and 2.
• MU2210 - 20 lessons of 1 hours’ duration, taken at regular weekly intervals during Terms 1 and 2.
• MU3407 - 16 lessons of 45 minutes’ duration, taken at regular weekly intervals during Terms 1 and 2.
• MU3393 – 21 lessons of 1 hours’ duration, taken at regular weekly intervals during Terms 1 and 2.
• MU5535 - 10 lessons of 1 hours’ duration, taken at regular weekly intervals during Terms 1 and 2.
• MU5539 - 22 lessons of 1 hours' duration, 1 hours’ duration, taken at regular weekly intervals during Terms 1, 2 and 3. If taken in combination with MU5535, the student is allocated an additional 4 hours.

Being assigned a tutor

After your Welcome Week induction, you will be assigned a new instrumental or vocal tutor from within our faculty. Although we are sure you will have a positive and fruitful partnership with your tutor, you have a one-month 'grace period' in which either student or tutor may request an alternative arrangement. After this time, you will be remain with your assigned tutor for any performance-related module in which such lessons are assigned to it. 

Where will I be taught?

Unless otherwise stated, your lessons will take place in the Woodlands Building. This is situated a short walk from Wettons Terrace, opposite car park 14. A campus map can be found here (link embedded). Your tutor will be in contact to outline your allocated room, and will communicate any changes if they arise.

Attendance

• Attendance for instrumental and singing lessons, in connection with relevant performance courses, is viewed in the same light as in attendance in all other courses.
• Attendance will be monitored by your instrumental or vocal tutor for each lesson, and submitted to the Department of Music.
• The Performance Manager should be informed of ALL changes of arrangements with your tutor, who are required to return reports on attendance and progress to the Department in the spring of a given academic year. 
• It is the responsibility of the student to notify the tutor of an absence or rescheduling of a lesson. Students must give notice of absence no later than 24-hours prior to their allocated lesson (unless reason being illness or emergency, deemed genuine by the tutor). If this code of practice is not followed, tutors are obliged to charge for this lesson and it will be taken out of the student’s allocated number of lessons.
• Once students are allocated to their tutor during their Welcome Week of their First Year at the College, there is a ONE MONTH transitional period for those wishing to change tutor. Any change must be discussed with both the Director of Performance and Performance Manager. The Performance Manager will be the only individual to facilitate a change to another tutor. After this time (i.e. November 1st onwards), students are to remain with their tutors throughout ALL Performance-related courses that they enrol on whilst at the College.
• If a student wishes to change tutor during their time at Royal Holloway (and outside of the one-month transitional period in Year One), this must be discussed in collaboration with their current tutor, Director of Performance and Performance Manager. This will only be granted in special cases.

Additional needs and expenses

The Department does not pay travel expenses incurred through attendance at lessons outside of Department premises, except in those cases when the Department is unable to provide tuition on a given instrument on campus. In these cases, reasonable travel expenses, agreed in advance with the Performance Manager, will be reimbursed.

Lesson agreement

Each student who receives tuition from one of our faculty staff members must complete a corresponding Lesson Agreement, after receiving an induction:

• I am an undergraduate student (Click here; link embedded)
• I am a postgraduate taught student (Click here; link embedded)

Returning students enrolled onto a music performance module will return their studies with their tutor from the previous academic year (in line with your Tuition Agreement). 

If you are enrolled onto a music performance module and have any questions about your instrumental or vocal tuition, please feel free to contact Nathan James Dearden (Performance Manager).

How many lessons should I expect to have?

Each student is assigned a certain amount of lessons, dependent on the music performance module they are enrolled onto:

• MU1118 – 18 lessons of 45 minutes’ duration, taken at regular weekly intervals during Terms 1 and 2.
• MU2205 – 16 lessons of 45 minutes’ duration, taken at regular weekly intervals during Terms 1 and 2.
• MU2210 - 20 lessons of 1 hours’ duration, taken at regular weekly intervals during Terms 1 and 2.
• MU3407 - 16 lessons of 45 minutes’ duration, taken at regular weekly intervals during Terms 1 and 2.
• MU3393 – 21 lessons of 1 hours’ duration, taken at regular weekly intervals during Terms 1 and 2.
• MU5535 - 10 lessons of 1 hours’ duration, taken at regular weekly intervals during Terms 1 and 2.
• MU5595 - 22 lessons of 1 hours' duration, 1 hours’ duration, taken at regular weekly intervals during Terms 1, 2 and 3. If taken in combination with MU5535, the student is allocated an additional 4 hours

Where will I be taught?

Unless otherwise stated, your lessons will take place in the Woodlands Building. This is situated a short walk from Wettons Terrace, opposite car park 14. A campus map can be found here (link embedded). Your tutor will be in contact to outline your allocated room, and will communicate any changes if they arise.

Attendance

• Attendance for instrumental and singing lessons, in connection with relevant performance courses, is viewed in the same light as in attendance in all other courses.
• Attendance will be monitored by your instrumental or vocal tutor for each lesson, and submitted to the Department of Music.
• The Performance Manager should be informed of ALL changes of arrangements with your tutor, who are required to return reports on attendance and progress to the Department in the spring of a given academic year. 
• It is the responsibility of the student to notify the tutor of an absence or rescheduling of a lesson. Students must give notice of absence no later than 24-hours prior to their allocated lesson (unless reason being illness or emergency, deemed genuine by the tutor). If this code of practice is not followed, tutors are obliged to charge for this lesson and it will be taken out of the student’s allocated number of lessons.
• Once students are allocated to their tutor during their Welcome Week of their First Year at the College, there is a ONE MONTH transitional period for those wishing to change tutor. Any change must be discussed with both the Director of Performance and Performance Manager. The Performance Manager will be the only individual to facilitate a change to another tutor. After this time (i.e. November 1st onwards), students are to remain with their tutors throughout ALL Performance-related courses that they enrol on whilst at the College.
• If a student wishes to change tutor during their time at Royal Holloway (and outside of the one-month transitional period in Year One), this must be discussed in collaboration with their current tutor, Director of Performance and Performance Manager. This will only be granted in special cases.

If you are a student enrolled onto the postgraduate module, Documenting Performance, your are allocated a number of instrumental or vocal lessons.

Each student is allocated a total of £260.00 towards lessons with their specialist teacher. For most tutors and mentors, this is likely to mean around 7 one-hour lessons at £37.00. Some tutors may require a higher rate (e.g. £43.00 per hour, the maximum that should be paid, which would result in 6 hours of lessons).

For further information about this module and tutor provision, please contact H.Stobart@rhul.ac.uk.  

On a case-by-case basis, we are able to facilitate second-study lessons with one of our world-class tutors, for students at the Department of Music. 

Please feel free to contact Nathan James Dearden (Performance Manager) to enquire. 

As part of an undergraduate or postgraduate student's music performance module, we at Royal Holloway also offer the potential for students to engage an external instrumental and vocal tutor to supplement their studies. This is a special offering that we provide to our students, so that their experience and studies can be enhanced by the teaching and support of a tutor of their choice.

For more information and to enquire, please visit this page.

Music-making across the campus is really important to us and we know that there may be students at Royal Holloway, not enrolled onto a music degree, who wish to receive instrumental or vocal tuition. 

Although we are unable to subsidise the costs associated with studying with one of our instrumental or vocal tutors, we are able to facilitate private tuition with one of them. The Department hosts 35 expert instrumental and vocal tutors to teach and support our students. Check out the Department of Music webpage to find out who’s who. 

Please feel free to contact Nathan James Dearden (Performance Manager) to enquire.