Care and Maintenance for Professional Development

Do you ever feel like you know just enough about string instruments to get by in your teaching or professional career, though you’re not sure what to do when something breaks or goes wrong? Or maybe you are looking for relevant, hands-on professional development opportunities for you and your music team?  

Our Care and Maintenance workshop offerings are your answer! Underpinned by our own musical journey, and our love and passion for stringed instruments, we are inspired to support, educate, and guide others too in their music journey at any stage.

These workshops and incursions are an engaging and hands-on way to ensure instruments are in the best condition year-round. Full of interaction, encouragement and Q&A, these sessions are an interactive way to encourage sustainability for all stringed instruments and add both value and skills to music educators and their teams to provide a holistic skill set that is immediately applicable in their day-to-day teaching. 

Why is Care and Maintenance important?

Just like cars, string instruments require regular maintenance and servicing to ensure they continue working and moving efficiently and effectively. In conjunction with regular daily care, stringed instruments can last an incredibly long time by ensuring their structural and tone integrity is maintained.

In addition to the costs associated with major repairs and replacement instruments, regular maintenance and servicing of stringed instruments ensures that the bridge, soundpost, pegs, fingerboard, strings, and seams are all in their best possible condition and are not prone to structural or tonal faults such as buzzing, thinness of tone, rattling, splitting or snapping.

Consisting of two 45-minute sessions either in-person or virtually, you will be equipped with the knowledge and the skills to assess school instrument inventories and complete basic servicing. We go through step-by-step how to correctly service and make adjustments to bridges, pegs, and other moving parts in order to service an instrument suitable for school conditions. You will also be involved in completing an instrument assessment, and be guided through different types of instrument repairs and faults. 

With a healthy dose of Q&A in both sessions, this PD is a cost-effective way of ensuring the longevity of your school’s musical instruments while up-skilling your team with lifelong, curriculum-relevant skills. Our Professional Development Workshops are recommended for any and all music educators and their support staff, including those who have never touched an instrument.Our professional development sessions can be delivered in-person or virtually, and there are a wide range of options available for those based in regional and rural locations.

How does Care and Maintenance benefit my school or studio?

Care and Maintenance may seem like just cleaning instruments, however, there is a world of benefits which underlie our teacher and student workshops. For you personally, some of the benefits include:  

• Building your professional and personal skill set
• Confidently complete preventative maintenance 
• Determining the severity of major and minor instrument damage
• Facilitating ways to integrate maintenance in your pedagogy

On a larger scale, our Care and Maintenance workshop will equip you to make informed and well-considered decisions in many contexts, including:

• Budget Planning and Forecasting: Maintaining a structured budget year on year is essential to the success of any string program. Undertaking Care and Maintenance servicing of instruments will lower your long-term budget spend. Furthermore, you will have the skills to assess instruments for damages and potential faults, many of which can be identified proactively.
• Learning and Empowerment: Servicing an instrument isn't generally taught in a school context, often leaving a gap in knowledge from school through to late adult age. You will be empowered to become independent and understand how stringed instruments work. We encourage teachers to include servicing and maintenance in their music lessons throughout the year, and adapt the skills from these workshops to their instrumental program.
• Inventory Management: Regular servicing means your instrument inventory becomes more simple, up-to-date, and accurate. This also assists with improved budget forecasting in instrument lifespan and asset replacements, meaning better use of your budget in replenishing your resources, spare strings, rosins and bows.
• Performance: One of the biggest culprits in thinness of tone is rosin build-up. Rosin build-up on the instrument belly, under the strings between the bridge and fingerboard can shorten string life and can cause varnish damage. Furthermore, rosin build-up in and around the f-holes can create a dull and muted tone. By a deep clean of the instruments - along with the servicing of pegs, strings, and ensuring the structural integrity of the instrument - your instruments will deliver a more positive experience in both home playing and on the performance stage.

We also encourage music educators to include Care and Maintenance in their teaching units. We are able to offer incursions and student workshops to all from the age of 7 right though to 70. Please get in touch with our Education Team on (07) 3368 3666 if you are interested in organising a student workshop, incursion, or similar event.