Most presents have a half-life. The toy is forgotten by February, the jumper doesn’t quite fit, the gadget gets superseded. Music lessons are one of the few gifts that are still being used the following summer — and, often enough, a decade later.
That’s the case for giving them. What follows is the practical part: what to buy, for whom, and how it works.
The simplest way to give music lessons is a Dublin School of Music gift voucher. You buy an amount; the recipient chooses the instrument, the school and the time that suits them.
That flexibility matters more than it sounds. You might be confident your niece wants to learn guitar, but she may turn out to want singing. A voucher removes the risk of guessing wrong, and it lets the recipient start when they’re ready rather than when the box was opened.
| Amount | What it covers | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| €60 | 2 lessons | A taste of it — a birthday or stocking filler |
| €99 | 3-lesson taster course | The most popular gift. Enough to find out if it clicks |
| €120 | 4 lessons | A month of lessons |
| €150 | 5 lessons | Half a term |
| €300 | 10 lessons | A full term, start to finish |
You can also choose any amount between €30 and €1,000 — useful if several people are contributing, or if you want to put something towards lessons someone is already taking.
If you’re unsure, the €99 three-lesson taster is the one to pick. Three lessons is long enough to get past the awkward first attempt and find out whether the instrument suits them, and short enough that nobody feels obliged to continue.
A child starting out. Lessons are one-to-one, so a shy child isn’t competing with a class. If you’re not sure which instrument fits them, this guide walks through matching the child to the instrument — and this one covers what age to start.
A teenager. Particularly one already playing. Vouchers can go towards Leaving Certificate music preparation, where performance can be worth half the result.
An adult who always meant to. The most common thing we hear from adult beginners is that they’d been thinking about it for years. A voucher is permission to stop thinking about it. Why adults who gave up music keep coming back.
Someone recently retired. Time, finally, and a real reason to use it. Starting at sixty makes the case better than we can here.
Someone with a date in mind — a wedding to sing at, an audition to prepare for. A voucher towards vocal coaching is a genuinely useful present.
They choose — but if you want to point them somewhere, we teach eleven instruments across our three schools:
Piano · Singing · Guitar · Violin · Drums · Flute · Clarinet · Saxophone · Classical guitar · Bass · Ukulele · Recorder and tin whistle
Piano is the usual recommendation for a first instrument, and there’s a good argument for why. But the instruments nobody suggests are worth a look too — the saxophone and ukulele in particular are easier starts than most people expect.
Three schools across south Dublin — Tallaght, Stillorgan and Terenure. The recipient picks whichever suits them; the voucher isn’t tied to a location.
Buy online and you’ll receive the voucher to pass on. When the recipient is ready, they get in touch, tell us the instrument and roughly when suits, and we match them with a teacher. There’s no deadline pressure — nobody has to start in January because the voucher says so.
If you’d rather talk it through before buying, ring us on (01) 492 9998 and we’ll help you pick an amount.
Christmas is when most vouchers are bought, but they work just as well for a birthday, a retirement, an exam result, or a Mother’s Day present for someone who’s mentioned once too often that they always wanted to play.
The thing being given isn’t really the lessons. It’s the assumption that the person receiving them is someone who could learn to play — which, in our experience, is most people, and more than they think.
