Frequently asked questions.

Terza is a lesson intelligence tool for private music teachers. Record a lesson, and Terza turns it into a summary, a list of every piece, scale, and exercise you covered (each linked to the moment in the recording it came up). If you ask for one, it also writes a practice note organized by piece, with the bars and pages you named, which you can edit and choose to share. Every lesson also adds to a longer record of a student’s progress over time.

Every lesson adds to that student’s own history: a searchable, year-over-year record of what was worked on, what improved, and what’s still sticking. The same record spans your whole studio, so patterns that don’t show up in any single lesson, like a technique most of your beginners struggle with, only become visible once you can see your whole studio at once. If you opt in to sharing anonymized lesson data, those patterns also draw on insight from every teacher using Terza, with nothing identifiable about you or your students ever shared. See how the record grows for more.

Yes. Terza is method-agnostic: it captures what you say and do in a lesson and makes insights from your teaching available to you. It does not assume any particular teaching approach. Your pedagogy stays yours.

General-purpose tools weren’t built for a lesson room: two voices and an instrument, often at once, with a lot of room reverb. Terza is built around that, separating speakers, timestamping observations, and linking every note back to the exact moment in the recording it came from. It also surfaces patterns across a student’s history and across your whole studio, something a general-purpose tool has no way to see. And it’s built with the consent, retention, and review safeguards a tool recording children needs, rather than general-purpose defaults that weren’t designed for that.

No. If you already use something for scheduling, invoicing, or billing, keep using it. Terza is the lesson intelligence layer: the record and insights that come out of a lesson, not the admin side of running a studio.

No. Terza grounds what it generates in what you said during the lesson, not an independent judgment of technique or musicality from the recording itself. You decide what a student is doing well or needs to work on. Terza surfaces insights that help you do that even better.

Not at the moment. Terza is designed around one-to-one lessons: one teacher, one student, and a record that builds for that student over time. If group lessons or rehearsals are an important part of your teaching, get in touch. We’d like to hear how you’d use it.

No. Terza is not a sheet music library or store.

You start recording at the top of the lesson and teach as normal. Terza runs in the background. When the lesson ends, stop the recording and it’s turned into a written summary with timestamped observations. You review it, edit anything you’d like, and decide whether you want a practice note. Terza only writes one when you ask it to, and nothing goes to a parent or student unless you choose to share it.

The lesson recording pauses while you’re on the call and resumes once it ends, so the call itself isn’t captured and nothing recorded before it is lost.

Terza hasn’t been tested with online lessons yet. It’s designed for in-person lessons, recorded on an iPhone or iPad in the room.

Ask Terza lets you ask a question, in plain language, about a student, about your studio, or for general pedagogical advice, and get an answer drawn from your own lesson history: for example, what you’ve been working on with a student’s bow hold over the last month, or what you covered in their most recent lesson, instead of searching back through old notes yourself. When an answer draws on your own lessons, Ask Terza names which ones.

Reflect looks at patterns in what you’ve already recorded, at two levels. For a single student, it flags recurring themes across lessons, so you can see when something has stalled and decide whether to change your approach. Across your whole studio, it surfaces patterns that show up in several students at once. Where the evidence supports it, Reflect points to what has actually worked: from your own studio’s history first, and, if you’ve opted in to the community program, from other teachers’ anonymized experience when your own studio doesn’t have an answer yet.

With your explicit, separate consent, Terza can include de-identified patterns from your lessons in a shared pool drawn from every teacher using Terza. It is entirely optional and off by default: Terza works fully without it. When you’re opted in, this pool can surface in two places: Ask Terza, when it points to an approach another teacher has tried, and Reflect, when your own studio doesn’t have an answer yet. Content is anonymized before it ever leaves your studio, and you can turn contribution off at any time from account settings, though content already shared can’t be traced back to you or removed. See the Privacy Policy for full detail.

No. A practice note is only generated when you ask for one, lesson by lesson. Once it’s written, you can edit it, discard it, or keep it to yourself: it only reaches a parent or student if you choose to share it.

You see the full picture: summaries, timestamped observations, any practice note you’ve asked for, and insights spanning that student’s history and your whole studio. A parent only ever sees a practice note you’ve chosen to generate, reviewed, and shared. They don’t have access to raw recordings, transcripts, or anything else Terza generates and stores.

Terza runs on iPhone and iPad. Recording a lesson needs iPhone 12 (2020) or newer, iPhone SE (3rd generation, 2022), iPad (10th generation, 2022) or newer, iPad Air (4th generation, 2020) or newer, iPad mini (6th generation, 2021) or newer, or iPad Pro (2021) or newer. See the question on older devices below, and check the App Store listing for the current minimum iOS version.

Partly. Recording needs Apple’s newer on-device transcription, which isn’t available on iPhone 11 (2019) and earlier, iPhone SE (2nd generation, 2020), iPad (9th generation, 2021) and earlier, iPad Air (3rd generation, 2019), iPad mini (5th generation, 2019), or iPad Pro models from 2020 and earlier. On those devices you can’t record, but you can still sign in and review lessons recorded on another iPhone or iPad.

Recording and transcription happen on your device, so you can record a lesson without a connection. Generating the summary (and any practice note you ask for) and syncing across your devices happens once the app can connect to the internet. If a lesson ends with no connection, it’s kept securely on your device and uploads in the background once you’re back online, with no need to reopen the app.

As many as you like. Your plan is limited by the number of students on your roster, not the number of devices. Sign in on your iPhone, your iPad, or both, at no extra cost and with no device cap.

Yes. Sign in with the same account and your students, lesson history, and drafts are there on whichever device you pick up. Terza works the same way on both.

Recording a child’s voice is treated as sensitive personal information under privacy law (COPPA in the US, PIPEDA in Canada), and a teacher can’t consent on a parent’s behalf. Terza requires a parent or guardian to directly complete a verifiable consent process before any lesson involving a minor student can be recorded. This is enforced by Terza’s systems, not just stated in a policy.

The consent notice explains, in plain language, what’s recorded, how it’s processed, which companies are involved and why, how long it’s kept, and the parent’s rights, including withdrawing at any time. A parent completes this step directly; it isn’t something a teacher can fill in on their behalf.

Yes, at any time, through a link included in every consent-related email. Withdrawing immediately stops future recording of that student and automatically deletes their stored audio, transcripts, and practice-note content.

Only the small number of service providers necessary to run Terza, each bound by data protection terms, and none of them are permitted to use lesson content to train their own models. The full, named list is in Terza’s Privacy Policy.

Audio is deleted 30 days after the lesson, automatically, on a published schedule. See the Data Retention section of the Privacy Policy for every data category.

Terza is built around COPPA’s 2025 Final Rule and Canada’s PIPEDA from the ground up: verifiable parental consent, named data partners, a published retention schedule, and a written information security program. See the Privacy Policy for full details.

An adult student consents for themselves, the same way a parent would for a minor. No separate parental step is needed.

Yes. Students in the US follow the same consent process as everyone else, with one extra step for a child under 13: US law requires the parent to confirm their identity before giving consent, so Terza asks them to complete a short identity check with Stripe first. Terza never sees the ID number the parent enters. See the Privacy Policy for how that check is handled.

Yes: 14 days, full access for up to 40 students, no cost.

Lite ($14/month, up to 5 students), Solo ($24/month, up to 15 students), and Studio ($44/month, up to 40 students). See the pricing section for current details.

You’ll need to move up to the next tier. Contact us if you’re not sure which plan fits your studio.

Yes. Paying annually works out to two months free compared to paying monthly.

Not currently, but this is planned for the future. If you run a music school, contact us to discuss your needs and to help us shape this feature.

An iPhone 12 or iPad Air (2020) or newer (see which devices can record), and a roster of students to add.

Add the student’s name and their parent’s contact information (or the student’s own, if they’re an adult). For a US student under 18, you’ll also be asked whether they’re under 13. Terza sends the consent request directly to the parent. Once they complete it, the student moves from “Awaiting Consent” to ready-to-record.

hello@terza.app for general questions; privacy@terza.app for anything about student data specifically.