How to Take Notes in Online Music Lessons and Use Them
Most students leave their first few online lessons certain they will remember what the teacher said. They are wrong, but they will not realize it until the next day, when they sit down to practice and cannot remember whether they were supposed to use a different fingering in measure twelve or a different rhythm in measure thirteen.
The fix is to take notes built for the specific quirks of remote learning. The good news is that the system is simple. The slightly less good news is that most students do it badly until someone tells them how.
Why Notes Matter More Online Than In Person
In-person lessons have built-in memory aids you do not notice until they are gone. The teacher writes on your sheet music. They tap on the page. They demonstrate on a piano right next to yours and your eyes can track exactly where their hands are. After the lesson, you walk out with a marked-up score that holds half the lesson’s information by itself.
Online lessons strip most of that out. The teacher’s annotations live on their copy, not yours. Their hands are on a screen, often at an angle that is hard to map onto your instrument. The “in the room” cues are gone.
A few specific gaps online lessons create:
- You cannot see the teacher write on the music. You can only hear them describe what they are writing.
- Demonstrations are harder to record visually because the camera angle may not show what you need.
- The conversation moves fast, and the natural pauses for note-taking are shorter.
- There is no shared physical space holding the work together between sessions.
None of this is a problem if you take notes well. It is a real problem if you do not. Students who keep a notebook open during the lesson, and have a system for using it after, tend to get more out of online lessons.
The Three-Column System
The system that works for most students is a three-column page in a notebook. You set it up before the lesson starts. Three columns, left to right, What, Why, How, with one row per instruction:
Column 1: What. What the teacher asked you to do. A specific instruction. “Slow down measures 17-20 to half tempo.” Not “play slower.” Specific.
Column 2: Why. Why the teacher asked. The reason behind the instruction. “Right hand is rushing the eighth notes.” This is the column that prevents you from following instructions you do not understand and reverting to old habits a week later.
Column 3: How. What the teacher suggested you do to fix it. The exercise, the count, the fingering. “Practice with metronome at 60 bpm. Count out loud.”
By the end of a 30-minute lesson you want a handful of rows, not a transcript. Our rule of thumb: if you filled a page, you were transcribing instead of listening, and if you wrote two lines, you were listening but not capturing. Somewhere in between is where the lesson survives the week without the note-taking choking the conversation.
The three-column system is good because it forces you to capture the reasoning, not just the directive. A student who only writes down the “what” is following a recipe. A student who writes down “what, why, how” is learning the principles, which transfer to the next piece and the piece after that.
What to Write Down (And What to Skip)
A common mistake is to try to write down everything the teacher says. This is impossible, and the attempt destroys your ability to actually listen during the lesson. Note-taking should support listening, not replace it.
What is worth writing down:
- Specific instructions about your current piece (measures, fingerings, dynamics).
- Practice strategies the teacher suggests for the week (slow practice, hands separate, metronome work).
- Technical observations about your playing (“right hand is tense,” “you breathe in the wrong place before the high note”).
- New concepts or vocabulary the teacher introduces.
- Anything you want to ask about next week but do not want to interrupt for now.
What is not worth writing down:
- Things you already know. Do not write down basic music theory the teacher mentions in passing.
- Long verbal explanations word-for-word. Capture the gist.
- Encouragement and small talk. Nice to hear; not actionable.
- The teacher’s stories and examples, unless one is genuinely a new mental model.
- Anything you can ask the teacher to repeat on video at the end of the lesson.
A useful filter: if you are not sure whether to write something down, ask yourself, “Will this affect what I do this week?” If yes, write it. If no, do not.
For more on what to expect generally from the online lesson experience, see our first online music lesson guide.
Reviewing Notes Before Your Next Lesson
Notes that get written and never reread are not really notes. They are journal entries. The students who get the real benefit from this system are the ones who review their notes regularly.
A minimum-viable review routine:
- The day after the lesson, open the notebook and read through the three-column entries. This is when the lesson is freshest and small clarifications can still be added (one or two sentences in a “follow-up” column, if needed).
- Once mid-week, open it again. Check whether you are practicing what you said you would. If you have drifted from the plan, get back on it.
- The day of the next lesson, read through one more time. Bring two or three follow-up questions or observations to the teacher. (“I tried the slow practice on measures 17-20: what else can I do if it is still rushing?”)
This third pass is the one that compounds. A teacher whose student arrives with specific follow-up notes can give better instruction faster. The lesson stops being a series of one-shot conversations and starts being a real progression. Anchor this to a daily practice habit. Our guide on how to practice music at home covers what to do with the notes between lessons.
When to Skip Notes and Just Ask for a Recording
There are moments when notes are not the right tool. A teacher demonstrating a tricky fingering, a rhythmic pattern, or a tone production technique often cannot be captured well in writing. In those moments, ask the teacher to demonstrate it once more, slowly, on camera, and ask whether they can record that stretch or send you a clip afterward.
Recording is usually the teacher’s to start rather than yours. On Zoom, a participant can record locally only if the host grants permission. On Google Meet, recording is a paid feature, and only the host, a co-host, or someone in the host’s own organization can start it, so a student outside the teacher’s account has no control to press. FaceTime has no built-in recording, so a clip has to come from the teacher or from your device’s own screen recorder. The reliable move is to ask your teacher for a short clip, and many will send one. The good ones expect this kind of request and welcome it.
A few situations where a recording beats notes:
- Any time the teacher demonstrates a physical technique you are unsure you can describe in words.
- Any time the teacher plays a passage you are supposed to imitate, especially if the rhythm is subtle.
- Any time you suspect you might forget exactly what was being shown.
The combination of three-column notes plus the occasional short demonstration recording is, for most students, the entire system. Notes capture the structure. Recordings capture the things words cannot hold. Between the two, very little of the lesson should slip through.
The point of taking notes in online lessons is that the lesson does not end when the call ends. It ends when you walk away from the instrument, having practiced what was asked, in the way it was asked, for the reason it was asked. Notes are how you carry the lesson with you.
The Note That Matters Most Is the One You Bring Back
Tony G. says a personalized lesson starts before anyone plays a note. He checks in on the week, then asks what has been practiced, what is going well and what is not. Harry B. describes the same thing from the other side: a good teacher draws the answers out of a student rather than handing them over, and a rigidly planned lesson usually misses what that student needed to hear. Both of those depend on you arriving with something specific. The three columns are for you, but one line in them is for the teacher, and it is the question you got stuck on this week. Move it to the top of the page before the lesson starts.
How to Find a Good Music Teacher on Tunelark
A good teacher pauses for you to write, repeats instructions on request, and treats your notes as a sign of seriousness rather than an interruption.
1. Open the teacher list and filter by your instrument.
2. Read bios. Look for teachers who mention practice strategy and week-over-week progression.
3. Book a trial lesson with one whose profile resonates.
4. After the trial, ask yourself whether the teacher gave you instructions specific enough to actually write down, or only general feedback that was hard to act on.
For broader weekly practice planning, see our guide on building a music practice routine for adults.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I take notes by hand or on a computer?
By hand is usually more practical for music students. A notebook does not compete with the lesson window on screen, and writing slower than you type forces you to summarize instead of transcribing. Studies on handwriting versus typing have gone both ways on memory, so the practical reasons are the ones to trust. A small spiral notebook next to your instrument is the simplest setup.
What if my teacher talks too fast for me to take notes?
Ask them to pause. Most teachers expect this and will slow down or repeat. Saying “give me a second to write that down” is a sign of a serious student, not a difficult one. If you keep falling behind, ask for a short demonstration recording instead.
Do I need to take notes for every lesson?
Yes, for the first several months at minimum. Once you have a strong sense of how a particular teacher works, you may need fewer notes for routine lessons. But any lesson that introduces a new piece, new technique, or new concept is a notes lesson.
How long should I keep my lesson notes?
At least a year. Old notes are surprisingly useful when revisiting an old piece, tracking your own progress, or starting a new piece similar to one you played before. Many adult students keep their notebooks indefinitely.
Should I share my notes with my teacher?
Not as a rule, but it can help. Some teachers appreciate seeing a student’s notes occasionally to check that instructions are landing as intended. If your notes consistently differ from what the teacher meant, that is a useful conversation to have early rather than later.
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About Jennifer Heath
I'm Jennifer Heath, VP of Operations at Tunelark and a lifelong singer. I joined the company in 2020 and oversee much of what makes Tunelark work for students and teachers: hiring, training and supporting our instructors, student support, marketing and day-to-day operations. I started voice lessons at 7 and sang with touring choirs through my teens. Music belongs in every life, for the self-expression, the discipline, the comfort and the simple joy of it.
