Privacy
Woodshed is a practice tool for music teachers and their students. This page explains exactly what we store, what we don't, and how to get rid of it.
The short version
- Your microphone audio never leaves your device during practice drills. When a drill listens to you play, the sound is analyzed in your browser or app and thrown away moment to moment. It is never recorded, never uploaded, and never stored. The one exception is lesson, class and rehearsal listening, which you or a teacher turn on: there the sound goes straight from the browser to a transcription service and is never recorded or stored by anyone. See below.
- We don't sell your data, and we don't run ads.
- We don't use your data to train AI models.
- No tracking or advertising cookies, from us or anyone else.
- You can download a copy of your data, or delete your account and everything in it, from inside the app.
01 What we store
Only what the app needs to teach you:
- Account details — your name and email address, so you can sign in and your teacher knows who you are.
- What you play — your instrument, goals, how long you practice, and what a teacher has recorded about your level.
- Practice results — which exercises you answered and whether you got them right. This is what lets the app stop re-teaching things you already know.
- Lesson notes — what your teacher writes after a lesson, and the practice plans generated from it.
02 Microphone
Several exercises — the tuner, pitch matching, sight-reading and rhythm drills — need to hear you play. Your device analyzes the sound as it happens to work out pitch and timing, and keeps only the result (for example “that note was 12 cents sharp”).
No audio recording is ever created, saved, or sent anywhere. You can refuse microphone access and still use the app — you lose the exercises that grade your playing, and nothing else.
03 Lesson listening
A teacher can ask Woodshed to listen to a lesson and turn it into their lesson notes. When they do, what you and your teacher say is transcribed live by a speech-to-text service and turned into a short summary your teacher then edits.
Audio is streamed live to the speech-to-text service and is never recorded or stored, and the words themselves are never saved either. What is kept is your teacher's own lesson note and a short summary of how the lesson was taught.
For a one-on-one lesson, your teacher has to record consent before this can be used at all, and if you are under 18 that consent has to come from a parent or guardian. Anyone else in the room while it is running will be written down too, which is why a “Listening” strip stays on screen the whole time so everybody present can see it.
None of it is ever shown to you inside the app, and your teacher can delete the summaries or withdraw consent at any time. Withdrawing consent deletes the summaries and stops any further listening; we keep the record that consent was given and when it was withdrawn, so there is an honest history of it.
A teacher can also listen to a whole class. The same rules apply: no audio and no transcript is ever kept. What is kept is a short summary of what the class worked on and, only where the teacher spoke to a student by name, short notes for that student (what the teacher told them, or what they asked). Your teacher uses these to build your practice week and can delete any of them at any time. Everyone in the room is transcribed while a class is being listened to, and the teacher is asked to tell the class before starting.
A musician can also ask Woodshed to listen to their own band rehearsal and write up the key notes. The same rules apply: no audio and no transcript is ever kept. What is kept, in the account of the musician who started it, is a short summary, the band's key notes, and, only where a bandmate was named out loud, short notes for that bandmate. Before starting, the musician must confirm that everyone in the room knows Woodshed is listening and is OK with it, and a “Listening” strip stays on screen the whole time. Bandmates do not need an account; the musician can send them the notes as a PDF. Deleting the notes removes everything written about anyone; only the rehearsal's length is kept, to count toward the monthly listening allowance.
04 Students under 13
Woodshed is designed to be used by a student with a teacher. Accounts for children are expected to be set up by the teacher or a parent, and a teacher can run a student's practice without that student ever having a login of their own.
Signing up on your own, without a teacher, is for ages 13 and up. The sign-up page asks for your birth month and year first; if you are under 13 it stops there and asks you to have a teacher or parent set the account up. Your birth date is not sent or stored; we keep only an age range (such as "15 to 17") so lessons suit your age.
If you are a parent or teacher and want a child's data removed, use the deletion steps below, or contact us and we will do it for you.
06 Download or delete your data
Go to Settings → Download my data for a copy of everything Woodshed holds for your account, in one file you can keep or take elsewhere.
To delete it, go to Settings → Delete account. This removes your login and your data straight away, and it cannot be undone.
If you are a teacher, deleting your account also deletes the student records, lesson logs and practice plans on your roster. Tell your students first.
If you can't sign in, email thewoodshedlab@gmail.com from the address on the account and we will delete it for you.
08 Changes
If this policy changes in a way that affects what we collect, we will say so in the app rather than quietly updating this page.