It is never too early to begin fostering a love of music in a child! Parents of young children should consider our Early Childhood Music Classes, while parents of children approximately 5 years and older may want to consider enrolling in private lessons. For children younger than 7 years, parents are encouraged to attend the weekly private instrument lesson and help facilitate home practice.

​If your child practices daily and intelligently and attends regular lessons, he or she will progress rapidly. If any one of these elements are lacking, your child will progress at a slower pace. In addition, parents who are highly engaged in attending lessons and facilitating home practice sessions with their child often see greater rates of progress than parents who take a more “hands-off” approach.

Lessons at home are often fraught with distraction and are attended in isolation. Northside Music Academy offers a community of children, parents, and teachers all striving towards the same goals in an environment optimally designed for learning music.

Northside Music Academy is open year-round, so you can begin at any time! Contact us to find out more.

You may sign up for a trial lesson without an instrument in most cases, as Northside Music Academy has a set of instruments that may be borrowed for demo purposes. After that, you will need to rent or purchase an instrument to use in lessons and during home practice sessions. Piano and percussion students will use the instruments at Northside Music Academy during lessons, but will still need their own instrument for home practice.

Northside Music Academy has relationships with local Chicago instrument retailers and rental businesses that offer high quality instruments at affordable prices. Please contact us for a referral. We discourage buying an instrument online without first consulting with your teacher.

Because every child progresses at his or her own pace, we strongly recommend private (one-on-one) lessons with our instructors in order to have the most rewarding experience and make the most rapid progress. In very special cases an exception may be made for semi-private lessons for students at roughly the same level who play guitar, ukulele, or violin/viola. Please contact us if you are interested in semi-private lessons to see if it would be a good option for your unique circumstances!

No. By registering for lessons you are renting a weekly time slot from your teacher. In addition, we have found that progress is very slow when there is a long period of time between regularly scheduled lessons.

The paid tuition reserves a classroom and the teacher at the scheduled time each week. Therefore there will be no refunds and no credits given for students who miss a lesson. We do understand that schedules may change, so our teachers will try to accommodate and reschedule lessons that cannot be attended if advance notice is given. However, this depends on the teacher’s availability and cannot be always guaranteed. The more notice you give us, the easier it usually is to reschedule lessons that cannot be attended. No make-up lessons will be offered for last minute cancellation (less than 24 hours) or no-shows, with exceptions for cases of emergencies, accidents, illnesses or death in the family. For Group Classes, due to the group structure that cannot be replicated outside of the regularly scheduled class time and the limited number of sections available, there are no make-ups offered for missed classes.

Northside Music Academy may decide to close if weather conditions are deemed extreme and unsafe. In the event of a closure, we will notify you by email and by text with as much advance notice as possible the day of your lesson. In most cases, we will still be able to hold lessons that day online from home. If lessons cannot be held online either however, an alternate solution will be provided that fits the circumstances.