Skills are the working unit of Musician Quest - the things teachers start, complete, and capture on video in every lesson.

Skill name

What the student can do, stated plainly. "Play a C major scale, hands together." "Read a 4-bar melody at sight." Families read these in progress emails, so write them in language a non-musician parent understands.

Skill description

A sentence or two explaining what the skill means and why it matters. This is your chance to translate teacher-speak into family-speak - the description appears where families see progress.

Category

The purpose of the skill for student and teacher. Categories help teachers see at a glance what kind of work a skill represents and help you keep Levels balanced across technique, theory, creativity, and performance. (See: Skill Categories - The Blended Lesson Structure)

Video requirement

A yes/no setting: does completing this skill require a student performance video? Video-required skills produce the proof moments families love. A good Level mixes video skills (the demonstrable, watchable ones) with teacher-verified skills.

Teacher text field

A field the teacher fills in during the lesson - the song name, the exercise used, or a short note about how the student got there. It's optional per skill, but once a skill has a text field, it can't be marked complete until the field is filled in. This is what makes the automatic family email feel personal rather than generic. When you enable a text field on a skill, you're asking the teacher for a few words of context; use it for skills where the specifics matter (e.g., "Perform a full song" - which song?).

How these fit together