I'm Gina, from shamelessmusiclessons.com. I'm a 28 year old private music teacher in the Philadelphia area.  I teach piano, voice, and violin to people of all ages.  I've run my teaching business for two years.  I studied piano and violin from the ages of 5-18, and voice from 18 -26.

Why Shameless?

What I'm really offering to people is my educational ethos - that everyone has musical capabilities, that to be human *is* to be musical.  Growing up, I had a music lesson experience common to many people: my teacher was well-intentioned but gave lessons where she alone set the curriculum and created a pass-fail atmosphere contingent upon whether I could do what she said I ought to.  This kind of educational approach leads to lots of negative feelings about oneself and one's ability to make music that stay with a person for a long time.  My goal with lessons is to empower people to discover their individual musical interests and abilities and to help them to become independent musical thinkers and expressive performers.  

Why videos?

 'Vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world's deep need.'             - Frederick Buechner

By putting short fun videos online, I can bring my approach to an almost limitless audience.  The video format forces me to streamline the way I present information, helps me to break ideas into small manageable chunks, and enables me to concretely illustrate abstract musical concepts.  These videos can be replayed endlessly, allowing kids to see them as many times as they need to understand what's being taught, and can be returned to if students forget something.    

Where's the money going?

I'm raising $5,000 of startup capital to cover the costs of buying video equipment (DSLR camera and lens, microphone, lighting setup), ancillary equipment (external hard drive, a refurbished Mac laptop for use in editing, a Pelican case to safely store and transport my expensive and delicate new equipment), a 1 year subscription to the Adobe Creative Cloud (gives me access to programs for video and audio editing, as well as a whole host of other programs that will help me run the best business that I can), production materials (props, costumes, makeup), giving an honorarium to Mitch and Artie, my 2 stellar collaborators, and paying to replace my keyboard by having my grandmother's piano moved into my apartment and tuned.

Besides the joy of giving and the satisfaction of helping to bring quality music education to the world, there are many fantastic perks to choose from!  Everyone who donates will receive a personalized thank you video, and it just keeps getting better from there: a singing telegram delivered on your behalf, a theme song written just for you or your project, 2 or 3 free lessons with me, a 2 or 12 month free membership to my website where you'll be able to view the videos I make and take advantage of other resources, all the way up to a performance from me at an event of your choice!

How else can people help?

If you're not able to make a donation right now, I will equally appreciate your helping me to spread the word about my campaign (please pass this link -http://igg.me/at/sml-online - along to everyone you know who might be interested!) and your sending me written expressions of encouragement and constructive criticism (you can send all well-wishes and feedback to gina@shamelessmusiclessons.com).  Thank you!