{"id":34335,"date":"2026-05-06T08:46:05","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T12:46:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=34335"},"modified":"2026-05-06T08:49:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T12:49:17","slug":"a-red-flag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/06\/a-red-flag\/","title":{"rendered":"A RED FLAG"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nSharon, a jazz saxophone teacher, pitched me a year-long package of music lessons. I don’t have especially \u201cgood ears\u201d — as the jazzers says — and I want to improved my ear-training and chord-recognition game.<\/p>\n

I was on a Zoom call with Sharon, who was based in Los Angeles. She wanted to talk about my motivation, and I wanted to talk about cost of the lessons. She didn’t want to talk about money.\u00a0She had a PAC system and an HSP system — these initials stood for something. I don’t know what. She asked what my level of motivation was, on a scale of 1-to-10. She wasn\u2019t happy when I answered “5.”<\/p>\n

I said, “What if I’m in a group lesson on Zoom with beginner musicians who don\u2019t know what a C7 chord is? Maybe I should I do a solo course.” I had found Sharon on the internet. (She said to tell you the truth<\/em> a lot, which annoyed me.)<\/p>\n

An hour later she told me the solo course was $1,200, for a year. Sharon\u00a0continued, “But my assistant, Juliet, in the Philippines, will send you a link to knock it down to $500. And I\u2019m going to be a hardass about that. There will be no access to coaching in the solo course, and the price is good for a week, cool? This isn’t about money, it’s about increasing your motivation.”<\/p>\n

Sharon’s bio said she had majored in psychology and music.<\/p>\n

Her quick drop from $1,200 to $500 jolted me.<\/p>\n

This was a bit of a red flag, no?<\/p>\n

I called my son the musico and discussed the matter. He said the whole thing sounded “opaque.” I passed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

[“Sharon” is a pseudonym.]<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Yiddishe Cup plays a free Mother’s Day concert this Sun., May 10, 2-3 pm. Beachwood library branch\/ Cuyahoga County Public Library, 25501 Shaker Blvd [corner of Shaker and Richmond]. Beachwood, Ohio. We’ll play “My Yiddishe Momma,” “Natural Woman,” and klezmer!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Sharon, a jazz saxophone teacher, pitched me a year-long package of music lessons. I don’t have especially \u201cgood ears\u201d — as the jazzers says — and I want to improved my ear-training and chord-recognition game. I was on a Zoom call with Sharon, who was based in Los Angeles. She wanted to talk about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34335"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34373,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34335\/revisions\/34373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}