If you're looking for a teacher who will travel to your home, your best bet is probably with a commercial studio or business that specializes in this service.  There are a few good independent teachers who still travel, but there are fewer each year.  Although, as with all things, there are exceptions, travelling teachers are generally less qualified and charge more than home-studio or community music school teachers.  If you absolutely must have a teacher who will come to your home, check the yellow pages or search online, and then interview prospective travelling teachers as you would any other instructor.

 

If you live in the Washington area, a great resource for finding teachers is the Northern Virginia Music Teachers Association.  They provide an on-line listing of teachers and can offer additional teacher contacts by zip code if necessary.  There is no charge.  Find out more at http://www.nvmta.org/find-a-teacher.php

 

In other parts of Virginia, you may try the Virginia Music Teachers Association referral service, accessible through http://www.music-usa.org/vmta

 

Many other local and state affiliates of Music Teacher National Association (MTNA) offer similar referal services.  Find the local affiliate(s) near you, nationwide, at http://www.mtna.org  MTNA also has an online directory of Nationally Certified Teachers of Music (NCTMs).  If you would find it useful for MTNA to offer a nation-wide teacher referral service, such as that available from the National Association of Teachers of Singing (http://www.nats.org) or the American String Teachers Association (http://www.astaweb.com), please suggest this to them through their web site!

 

If you live in at least a medium-sized city, community schools of music can be a great place to find a teacher.  The best place to find out about these studios, which can range from a back room in a music store to small teacher-owned storefronts to for-profit operations and large non-profit educational institutions, is probably your local yellow pages.  Often, large churches will have music-outreach programs, which in some cases are in effect full-scale music schools.

 

Be sure to interview any potential teachers, both over the phone and in person, before signing up for lessons!  If you're musically unsure yourself, and don't know how to go about interviewing teachers, check out some great suggestions from MTNA at http://www.mtna.org/choosemt.htm