What Happens When a Music Teacher Stops Taking Himself So Seriously

If you've seen my recent social media Reel, you'll know it opens like a Netflix trailer: solemn music, a slow zoom, and the line, "My name is Paul Whitehead, and I am a music teacher. This is the story of how I made the transition from taking myself far too seriously... to being the music teacher for people who've always felt like they were in the wrong lesson."

It got a laugh. But underneath the joke, it's actually the truest thing I could tell you about how I teach — whether you're a parent looking for a guitar teacher in the Fish Hoek valley, or based in the UK or the Netherlands and searching for online guitar or piano lessons that don't feel like a throwback to your own stiff, slightly terrifying childhood music teacher.

Chapter One: The Music College Years

I studied contemporary music at the Campus of Performing Arts in Johannesburg, graduating with a BMus (Hons) in partnership with the University of Chichester. I genuinely loved it — being surrounded constantly by other musicians who took the craft as seriously as I did was the kind of environment I didn't know I needed until I had it.

The seriousness came later, once I left. Stepping out of that bubble and into the actual music industry was a bit of a jolt — it doesn't run on the same rules as the academic world, and I think I over-corrected for a while, treating every lesson and every gig with a kind of self-importance that the degree hadn't actually asked of me. Good training. Slightly missing the plot on how to carry it.

Chapter Two: The Identity Crisis

Somewhere in among all of that, I started making experimental electronic music under a different name — Miles of White. No academic framing required, no one checking whether it was "proper" composition. Just sound and instinct.

That contrast — the trained, considered musician on one side, and the glitchy, rule-free electronic project on the other — turned out to be the most honest snapshot of who I actually am. It's also, I think, why the "classical in the AM, death metal in the PM" version of me resonates with people: most of us contain more than one register, even if we've been taught to pick a lane.

Chapter Three: The Wrong Lesson

This is the part the Reel was really about. Somewhere along the way, I stopped trying to turn every student into a smaller version of the "serious musician" I once thought I had to be. I started noticing how many people — kids and adults alike — came to lessons already half-convinced they were "the wrong kind of student." Not disciplined enough. Not classical enough. Started too late. Wanted to learn film music, or jazz, or their favourite guitar solo, instead of scales.

Turns out, that feeling of being in the wrong lesson is incredibly common. And once I stopped taking myself so seriously, I realised my job wasn't to correct that feeling — it was to prove it wrong. There is no wrong lesson. There's just the lesson that actually fits you.

Why This Matters Whether You're Down the Road or a Continent Away

These days, my teaching happens in two very different settings, and the philosophy is identical in both.

Locally, I teach guitar and piano in person across the Fish Hoek valley — Fish Hoek itself, Kommetjie, Sun Valley, Simon's Town, Noordhoek, and Kalk Bay. If you're nearby and have ever hesitated to start lessons because you worried you'd be "bad at it" or too old to begin, that hesitation is exactly the wrong lesson I'm talking about.

Online, I teach students across the UK and the Netherlands and beyond — many of them South African expats I taught years ago, some of them local UK and Dutch students who found me through a referral. Distance and time zones aren't a barrier; a laptop, a decent internet connection, and 30 minutes to an hour is really all it takes.

In both settings, the goal is the same: strip away the intimidation factor, keep the actual craft intact, and let people learn the instrument in a way that feels like theirs, not like a lesser version of some imaginary "correct" way to do it.

The Diploma Still Counts For Something

To be clear — I'm not knocking the training. The RSL (Rockschool) Music Teaching Diploma came a bit later, while I was working as a guitar teacher at St John's College in Johannesburg, largely because the head of music and my sectional head there got me genuinely curious about teaching as its own craft, separate from playing. That diploma, alongside the BMus, is exactly why I can tell when a shortcut is safe to take and when it isn't. But nobody's ever asked to see it. What students actually want is to walk away from a lesson feeling like they can play something they love.

So, whether you're just up the road in Fish Hoek or logging on from Bristol or Amsterdam — welcome to the wrong lesson. I promise it's the right one.

Paul Miles Whitehead teaches guitar and piano in person across Fish Hoek, Kommetjie, Sun Valley, Simon's Town, Noordhoek and Kalk Bay, and online to students in the UK, Netherlands and beyond. Get in touch to book a lesson.