I found this:

Why parents should not bring their kids to commercial music studio at shopping center.

And

A review about commercial music studio's boss. Cameron Tong .

What do you think?

I think it is a very well-maintained and professional-looking website.

Yes, actually I learn a lot from this teacher. I especially like his video of interviews with Dr. Kolar.

I think it is kind of slimy. He sounds like a used car salesman, not a piano teacher. Based on his website, I'd pass.

I found myself skimming through the site (not actually taking in much information); the readability of the site isn't good... for example, why is his bio post entirely in italics?

It looks like he used a template but took it the wrong way. On the main page, he has five different font colours. Five. Where does the viewer look first? Answer: the viewer leaves.

Maybe the designer in me is being nit-picky, but the website isn't drawing in a lot of students. (And it can be fixed with a few tweaks.)

Maybe I'm just tired, but I find the site confusing. The header is for Irvine Piano Studio, the address block on the upper right is "Kevin Kao's Piano Studio," while the refers to "FreshStart Piano Studio."

The writing is awkward throughout, and the text was difficult to read. The criticism of the Irvine School of Music was not useful. Finally, I found this sentence in particular rather offensive, "Lastly, my Christian background and upbringing gives me a level of integrity that's not always guaranteed with others."

Hope that helps.

But how do you know if a site is drawing in a lot of students or not? I do think your assessment is mildly on the nit-picky side.

Kevin's site looks a lot better than some other websites for piano studios around here (trust me--there are some major clunkers!), and the content is actually quite useful. I don't find the site hard to navigate or confusing at all.

I agree with Anz

+1

I can say his comparison to Tiger Wood's is crap. My daughter golfs with Tiger's first coach and he said that instantly everyone knew he had incredible raw talent. His regret was that the course members didn't appreciate him for reasons of race.

I would guess the same would be with Mozart - undeniable raw talent, but my daughter doesn't take lessons with his first piano teacher.

And just because my daughter has the same golf coach, no matter how committed she is, she won't be the next Tiger.

But if anyone has read Condoleezza Rice's bio and her career in ice skating, I think everyone one can agree that hard work and striving to be your best is more important than being the next Woods or Mozart.

A teacher promising more than that would make me leery.

Extremely offensive.

I didn't look through the whole website, but I do wholeheartedly agree with his stance on lessons at music centers.

Funny, I actually don't find that statement offensive. It comes across as opinionated and naive, but far from being really offensive.

The website's descriptions of commercial music schools are quite accurate, and Kevin's opinions on that topic are shared by lots and lots of piano teachers. Many local, private piano teachers who used to have 40-50 students are seeing a steady decrease of enrollment ever since the first of these "music schools" came to town, and which have since mushroomed everywhere.

AZN: It's one thing to mention something about yourself (integrity, etc), however silly your excuses are (I'm A christian) and it's entirely a different league to be talking about the rest (they are NOT Christians and thus not as good as I am)...

I think...

A bit bizarre to publicly put down your employers method of business, and point people to your competing business, while still working there. Also a bad career move, in general, to publicly and negatively about a former employer (assuming one wants to continue to work in the industry). I guess he's committed to teaching privately

I think the whole thing is incredibly confusing. The site itself is called "IrvinePianoStudio.com", but it also seems to be the website for the "FreshStart Piano Studio" and "Kevin Kao's Piano Studio."

It contains a blog entry criticizing the "commercial music studio at the shopping center" and Conrad Tao, the director of the Irvine Piano Studio. It seems odd that IrvinePianoStudio.com has a blog criticizing the owner of the IrvinePianoStudio.com.

I can only guess that Kevin Kao is IrvinePianoStudio.com's webmaster and that he's decided to use Conrad Tao's own website against him, in which case he has zero integrity whatsoever and could probably be sued for libel. (Although it seems Mr. Kao's blog entry on the "commercial music studio in shopping center" doesn't actually have any facts on Mr. Tao and never says exactly what went wrong.)

Mr. Kao is listed as the administrative and technical contact for the IrvinePianoStudio's website. On the site, he states that he no longer works for the Irvine Piano Studio, so he's apparently chosen to use the website to promote himself while criticizing his former boss.

Mr. Kao has also taken the Facebook url "http://www.facebook.com/IrvinePianoStudio" and turned it into the FreshStart studio instead.

The whole thing is terribly confusing. Mr. Kao has succeeded in destroying the Irvine Piano Studio and FreshStart Studio brands. And he shoots himself in the foot with that "my Christian background and upbringing gives me a level of integrity" comment. There is no integrity here. Since he hasn't released the IrvinePianoStudio's domain registration, he's robbed his former employer of the ability to maintain his online presence.

Mr. Kao may say he's not bitter and has a lot of integrity, but his actions tell a different story. He'd be better off taking the high road. Create a website for FreshStart piano studio and actually make a fresh start.

Actually, there is Irvine Piano Studio and there is Irvine School of Music.
Mr. K worked for Mr. T in Irvine School of Music in the past then later build up Irvine Piano Studio.
Very confusing, yes, I agreed.

Ugh...I thought that might be the case, but Irvine School of Music doesn't even bother to list the names of its teachers, further adding to the confusion.

What a horrible mess! All these random brand names and studio websites with no real information on actual people. It's like Bad Marketing 101.

Oh, there's a reason for that!! Welcome to the mess.

By my count there are now over 13 "music schools" within a 5-mile radius, and I'm not counting the private studios. It's not fair to throw a blanket over all the "music schools" and say that they are all terrible; I have personal friends who--due to various reasons--must work for one of these places. And some of them are truly good teachers!

It's all about the mad grab for clients, which the city seems to have an endless supply of. So, of course, in this mad rush to get clients some "music schools" will resort to using negative ads and poaching of students from other studios. It's also difficult to maintain quality of a large school, as there are only so many good students to go around, and the great majority of the piano students are going to be average.

That being said, if you go to the local festivals, you can instantly tell which students study at the "music schools." The difference is night and day. It seems like the really, really good students have parents who took the time to seek out excellent private teachers. They are not interested in dropping off the kids at a plaza for lessons and then go grocery shopping for the next 30 minutes.

*sigh*
I remember when Irvine Ranch was a ranch.

Do you have to be Asian or Asian-American and a child to take piano lessons at one of these academies?

I hope not! But it certainly seems that way.

Wow, what a mess is right! How fun is it that a post here asking about one of my blog entries has turned into a critique of my entire website and my character?

Thank you to whoever told me I was being talked about here, haha.

Okay I'll go back and reply to some posts later when I have more time...hopefully I can help clear up some of this confusion and offer up my take on some of the things.

First, my view on commercial music studios. I don't think it's an inherently bad business model, I know a few music studio owners and they are great people. I was actually approached to start one of my own as part of an afterschool program. I eventually turned it down for a few reasons, one of them was because of the contract I signed when I worked for Cameron at Irvine School of Music; it forbid the signee of the contract from starting a competing business for like...two years or something.

I used to think a lot of the commercial music studio owners are shady by nature, recruiting other teachers' students at festivals/evaluations, cutting various corners, breaking association rules to save money, etc; but, lately, through various other life events, I've seen how money changes people for the worse. While it doesn't excuse what they do, it does slightly alter my view of them. By the way, sorry if all the wise and experienced people on here already know this, but I'm still relatively young and learning, haha.

And if nothing else, they serve as warning signs for my own business future.

I'm assuming you're talking about the paragraph on my home page and not the blog post? Thanks for the feedback, I'll probably make a few changes to it since I wrote it awhile ago, but I can see how it'd come off that way. But again I'm assuming you aren't talking about the blog entry or the FAQ page?

I didn't realize italics were hard to read, to me cursive is, but then I'm not a designer. However, to answer your question, it's entirely in italics because I wanted it to be, it looked more like a written statement as opposed to printed, but then I didn't want it in cursive, so italicized it was.

I see what you mean about the colors, I think I can get rid of one or two so my action colors stand out more. But other then that, I would hope a parent looking to invest in piano lessons for their kid wouldn't be so easily deterred by a website with five different colors, and if they are, maybe they aren't right for my piano studio and that's okay with me.

Also, I'd say you're wrong about the website not drawing in a lot of students, but that's relative, so maybe you're right.

Thanks, I completely agree with the variety of studio names being confusing. I bought the domain name first but then later decided I didn't want to seem like I was proclaiming myself as THE Irvine piano studio, I might be thinking too much, but I guess my indecisiveness showed through in my website. I'm going to change Kevin Kao's Piano Studio on the top to FreshStart Piano Studio...however...I'm still undecided about what to do with my domain name and the other name for my studio even though I think it'd make more sense to just go with my domain name.

Sorry for the awkward writing, I'm trying my best, but English isn't my first language. I'd love to know which parts you found awkward.

A way to clear up the naming confusion: Pick a single studio name. Buy a domain name to match. Put your site on that domain name. Redirect from the other domain name to the new domain name, if you're concerned about broken links.

I couldn't agree with you more on the bit you wrote about hard work and striving to be your best being more important, that is precisely what I'm advocating, although with a slight caveat. Not just hard work, but hard, smart, and deliberate work. And if you really want to preach that with your daughter I think it's counterproductive to also be placing a ceiling on what she can achieve and placing an easy way out by preaching about talent. Maybe your daughter won't think this way, but I speak from experience, most kids start to use talent as a crutch--and this goes to the ones that think they have talent AND ones that don't think they have talent.

There's actually quite a bit of literature and research available on the "talent myth" that I think are worth checking out for any parent. Just search for "talent" in Amazon.

I could respond to what you said about Tiger Woods and Mozart and my crap comment, but if you read "Talent Is Overrated" by Geoff Colvin, you'll find that the view you have is inaccurate. Unless your daughter used to golf with Tiger Wood's dad before he passed away, which she might be, then by the time this "first coach" worked with Tiger Woods he had already gone through a lot of incredibly focused and intensive training.

If you don't buy the book from Amazon, just read pg. 29-31 in the bookstore. There's also a part in the book that talks about Mozart's "talent".

So in short, I stand by my comment. Compared to the amount and kind of work Mozart and Woods put in to be successful, their talent played a much smaller role in comparison.

I hope this helps, and I hope you'll check out the literature available on this subject

Kevin, the sooner you remove that negative essay about your rival and former employer from your website, the sooner you will present yourself as a responsible independent American piano teacher in the year 2013. Unless this is a slag-the-competition idea you acquired in a pedagogy class.

Kevin, FWIW, +1. When ever I'm at a store/service agency, etc., and they start bad-mouthing the competition, I politely make my exit. I'm interested in what positive you can do for me, not what your competitor cannot do. FWIW.

Peter, if this is a slag-the-competition idea I learned from pedagogy class, then I'd be slagging on every other piano and music studio out there. I feel like your last statement jabs at not only me but also the pedagogy program and professors I studied with. Just a side-note, that is actually what Cameron is doing on the Irvine School of Music website, putting down every other commercial music studio and private studio with items that are just completely untrue.

My review of Cameron is true. And speaking of responsibility, I do feel responsible to let people know about him. If I know he is a chronically dishonest person, I can't just turn away and say, "oh well". Truthfully, once I found out about his character and his website, I didn’t feel comfortable teaching at his studio anymore. I realize your view stems from the fact that I'm also a piano teacher and thus a competitor, but I don't think worrying about and protecting myself from the backlash I might experience from some people excuses me from sharing what I know. The parents that were lied to were VERY upset, as well they should be. Would you keep quiet if you knew?

I don't see how the review has to do with being in the year 2013 or being an American.