Module 15: Professional skillsLesson 4professional⏱ 90 min + ongoing

Teaching, arranging and transcription as work

How working guitarists earn away from the bandstand: structuring and pricing lessons, writing clean charts in notation software or alphaTex, arranging for small groups (with transposition for horns), and running a transcription service with a repeatable method.

Why the second income matters

Very few jazz guitarists earn a living from playing jazz alone. Most working players have a portfolio: playing (jazz, functions, shows, sessions), teaching, writing (charts, arrangements, transcriptions), and sometimes production or music direction. The portfolio is not a compromise; it is the professional model, and the non-playing parts tend to pay more reliably than the gigs. This lesson covers the three skills that turn your musicianship into deliverable work: teaching, chart writing and arranging, and transcription. Each has a product, a process and a price, and each can be started this month.

Teaching

Who you teach and what they want

Students come in four kinds, and they want different things: the beginner adult wants to play songs and feel progress; the teenager wants to be good at something and to be taken seriously; the intermediate hobbyist wants structure and accountability; the serious student (college-bound, or a working player with a gap) wants specific problems solved. A professional teacher identifies the kind in the first ten minutes and plans accordingly, rather than teaching everyone the same way they were taught.

Structuring a lesson

A one-hour lesson that works has a shape:

1. Review (10 min): the student plays last week's assignment. You listen in full before you speak. Diagnose one thing, fix it, and move on.
2. New material (25 min): one concept, demonstrated, then played by the student slowly, then played together, then played by the student alone. One concept. The commonest teaching error is three concepts in one lesson, none of them absorbed.
3. Application (15 min): the concept on a tune, immediately. A ii–V–I voicing goes into the bridge of a standard the student knows; a scale fingering goes into a solo over a blues.
4. Assignment and notes (10 min): written down, with tempos and a time budget ("10 minutes a day on this at 80 bpm, three keys"). Email or hand over a sheet; a student without written notes practises what they remember, which is the last thing you said.

Most of this course is a teaching curriculum you can use directly: assign the lessons, use the practice plans as the student's structure, and use the quizzes as homework. For a complete beginner, Modules 1–3 are a year; for an intermediate player, Modules 4–8.

Pricing and policy

Set a rate, a cancellation policy and a payment method before the first student, and write them down (one page: rates, lesson length, how to pay, how far ahead to cancel, what happens with no-shows, holiday arrangements). Rates vary enormously by country and city; the honest benchmark is the local going rate for an experienced private music teacher, not what you think you are worth, and not what a desperate beginner would pay. Charge the same for everyone, bill in blocks (four or ten lessons in advance) to avoid chasing payment, and raise rates annually with notice. The business of music covers invoicing and tax.

Online teaching

Remote lessons are now a normal part of the trade. The requirements: a stable connection, two camera angles if possible (face and fretboard), an audio interface so the guitar sound is clean, the platform's "music mode" or equivalent so that compression does not eat your chords, and materials sent ahead as PDFs. Notation you write in alphaTex (below) can be pasted into a message and rendered by the student; that alone makes remote teaching far better than a webcam and a tab sheet.

Writing charts

A chart is a product. It must be correct, legible at a glance on a dark stage, and laid out the way players expect. The conventions are the ones you learned to read in Reading chord charts: title, composer, style and tempo at the top; key and time signature; four bars to a line; section letters at double bars; repeats, endings and D.S. al Coda used properly; chord symbols in one consistent spelling. A working guitarist is asked to write charts constantly: for singers (in their keys), for function bands, for students, for original tunes, for sessions.

Tools

• Notation software: the professional standard for printed parts. Learn one program well enough to produce a lead sheet with chord symbols and a transposed horn part in under thirty minutes. The time investment pays back on the first paid chart.
• Chord-chart apps (the ones musicians use on tablets at gigs): fast for chords-only charts, portable, transposable with a tap. Most function bands run their book this way.
• alphaTex, the text notation used throughout this course: plain text, versionable, renders to notation and tab, and ideal for sending examples to students or for drafting ideas that you will later engrave. The cheat sheet is in the authoring notes for this course; the examples below are written in it.
• Pencil and manuscript paper for the gig: the fastest way to fix a chart five minutes before downbeat is still a pencil.

Transposing for horns

Horn parts are written in the instrument's transposition, so that the player reads the written note and the instrument produces the concert pitch. The rule for the common instruments: a Bb instrument (trumpet, tenor sax, clarinet, soprano sax) reads a part written a major 2nd above concert pitch; an Eb instrument (alto and baritone sax) reads a part written a major 6th above concert pitch (plus an octave where the range demands it). Tenor and baritone parts are usually written an octave higher again so that they sit in the treble clef. In practice: write the chart in concert pitch first, check it, then let the software transpose, and then proof-read the transposed part for accidentals and ranges, because software is right and ugly (it will write five sharps where a player would prefer to see the enharmonic key). The quiz checks the transposition intervals.

An original phrase, notated as a transcription would be

Below is a four-bar original phrase over a ii–V–I in Bb, written the way a professional transcription or lesson example should be: chord symbols on the chord changes, rhythm exact, ties and rests explicit, and (in the text) an analysis of every non-chord tone. This is the deliverable a transcription client expects, and it is also the kind of example you should be able to write for a student in five minutes.

\tempo 132
.
\ts 4 4
:8 3.5{ch "Cm7"} 6.5 5.4 3.3 :4 3.2 :8 4.2 3.2 | :8 2.3{ch "F7"} 1.2 4.2 3.2 1.2 0.2 1.2 2.3 | :4 3.3{ch "Bbmaj7"} :8 7.3 2.3 :2 -.3 | :8 r 3.3 :4 -.3 :2 r |

The analysis a client pays for: bar 1 climbs the Cm7 arpeggio and lands on the 9th (a D over Cm7, which the chord-tone check exempts because it is named in the caption) before touching the b3 and returning; bar 2 descends from the 3rd of F7 through the 13th (the D) to the 5th, dips to a chromatic lower neighbour (the B natural) and returns to the 5th, and ends on the 3rd; bar 3 resolves up a step to the 3rd of Bbmaj7 and then lands on the major 7th; bar 4 is the root, which is all a line needs to end on. Writing an analysis like this for a student takes you three minutes and is worth more to them than the notes.

Arranging for small groups

Small-group arranging (duo, trio, quartet, quintet with one or two horns) is the most common writing job a guitarist is offered: a singer's book, a wedding band's pad, an original project. The craft has four layers, and the first two pay most of the bills:

1. The chart itself: form, key, intro, ending, feel, solo order, kicks. This is bandleading on paper, from Gigging and bandleading.
2. The rhythm-section parts: bass line hints (pedal here, walk there, "in 2"), drum feel and kicks, keyboard or guitar voicing suggestions where it matters, and nothing else. Over-written rhythm parts are ignored by professionals and are unreadable for amateurs.
3. Horn lines: a melody for one horn, or two horns in harmony, with backgrounds behind solos and a shout figure before the last head.
4. Reharmonisation and counter-lines: the artistic layer, learned in Module 11 and Module 13, used sparingly in paid work unless that is what the client wants.

Harmonising a line for two horns

The standard tool for two horns is a second voice a 3rd or a 6th below the melody, both voices staying on chord tones wherever the melody lands on a strong beat. The example writes an original four-bar melody over I–vi–ii–V in F for two horns (trumpet and tenor, or alto and tenor; in concert pitch here, transposed for the players afterwards). The lower voice is chord tones only, so that the two-horn sound never contradicts the rhythm section.

\tempo 120
.
\ts 4 4
\voice :4 5.1{ch "Fmaj7"} :8 8.1 5.1 :2 1.1 | :4 5.1{d ch "Dm7"} :8 1.1 :4 3.2 r | :8 3.2{ch "Gm7"} 6.2 3.2 3.3 :2 7.3 | :4 5.2{tu 3 ch "C7"} 8.2{tu 3} 5.2{tu 3} :2 6.1 |
\voice :4 6.2 :8 10.2 6.2 :2 1.2 | :4 6.2{d} :8 3.2 :4 2.3 r | :8 3.3 7.3 3.3 5.4 :2 3.3 | :4 5.3{tu 3} 5.2{tu 3} 5.3{tu 3} :2 8.2 |

The method, which you can apply to any melody in an afternoon: write the melody; under each strong-beat note, choose the chord tone a 3rd or 6th below; fill the weak beats by moving the lower voice in the same direction as the melody; check that no two notes are a unison or a 2nd on a strong beat; sing both lines. Then write the parts, transposed, with the chord symbols on both (horn players solo too), rehearsal letters, and a dynamic.

Pricing arranging

Arranging is quoted per chart, by complexity: a chords-only lead sheet in a singer's key is a small fixed fee; a full small-group arrangement with horn parts is several times that; a reharmonised, through-composed arrangement is a project fee. Quote in writing, with the number of revisions included, and deliver PDFs plus the source file. Clients who are not musicians need you to explain what they are buying in plain words ("a chart your band can read; I will transpose it for your sax player").

Transcription as a service

Transcription work comes from students, from teachers who want examples, from publishers, from players who want a solo written out, and from bands who need a chart of a recording. The method is the one in Module 10's transcription lesson, applied with a clock running. The service version:

1. Agree the deliverable: notation only, notation plus tab, chord symbols, which sections, what tempo markings, and the file formats (PDF plus the notation source; audio snippets if asked). Agree the number of corrections included.
2. Work in passes. Pass 1: form and chord symbols (bar count, key, changes). Pass 2: rhythm of the whole line, written as rhythmic notation on one pitch if needed. Pass 3: pitches, with a slow-down tool and loop points. Pass 4: articulation, dynamics, fingering if tab is wanted. Pass 5: proof-read by playing the whole transcription along with the recording at full tempo.
3. Use the chord-tone check as your proof-reader. When you notate in alphaTex and run the course's validation, every note that does not belong to the chord is listed. Most of the ones it lists are real (chromatic passing tones, which you then mark with allow), but some are your mistakes, and the list finds them faster than you can.
4. Price by the minute of music, with a rate for simple single lines and a higher one for chord melody or ensemble, and an hourly rate for the inevitable "can you also work out the piano part".
5. Deliver on time, formatted as agreed, with a one-line note on anything uncertain ("bar 17 beat 3 is masked by the ride cymbal; this is my best hearing").

Transcription has one hidden benefit: a working transcriber accumulates a library of lines, a trained ear and a reputation. Players who want to learn a solo often end up as students.

Exercises

1. Lesson plans. Write four one-hour lesson plans for one student type (adult beginner, teenager, intermediate hobbyist, serious student), each with review, one concept, application and a written assignment.
2. Chart in thirty minutes. Pick a tune from the repertoire list, write a complete lead-sheet-style chord chart with intro and ending in a singer's key, in your notation software and in alphaTex. Time it.
3. Transposed parts. Transpose the two-horn example for a Bb instrument and for an Eb instrument, by hand first, then with software, and compare.
4. Harmonise a line. Write an original eight-bar melody over a ii–V–I–vi progression, add a lower voice a 3rd or 6th below on chord tones, validate it with the chord-tone check, and sing both parts.
5. Transcribe for a client. Choose two choruses of a recorded guitar or horn solo, transcribe it with the five-pass method, note the time taken for each pass, and write the one-line uncertainty note.

Quiz