Interview with Dr Frankie Dyson Reilly

Dr Frankie Dyson Reilly holds a B.Mus (Hons. Class I) and a DMA, and teaches piano, composition, and music theory. She runs a private teaching studio — teaching from home and at a location in Moorooka — alongside a peripatetic role at All Hallows' School in Brisbane. She's been teaching for around 10 years and discovered Octavia through a Google search for music studio invoicing software.

Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and relevance.

You can learn more about Frankie and her teaching at Frankie Dyson Reilly.

Tell me a bit about yourself, your teaching setup, what you teach, and how long you've been teaching.

So I've been teaching for about 10 years now. Four of those years were with a music school, and then for the last 6 years I've set up my private studio. I'm now teaching at home and at All Hallows' School in Brisbane. I teach piano, composition and music theory. Piano is the main instrument I teach, but I've also taught music theory at the conservatorium, and now offer that to my students. So basically it's a mix of all of those, but very much piano is my main instrument. And I'm teaching across multiple studios as well. I teach at a location in Moorooka, then I teach at home — my little home teaching setup — and then I teach at school.

What were you using before Octavia for managing your teaching and business?

I was using just an online invoicing site — a very low-budget kind of site. And I basically got to the point where I've got something like 30 students now, and it was no longer feasible for me to be manually writing up invoices every single term for my students — they're invoiced by the term. And also teaching at a school, which is quite new for me — I've only really been teaching at the school for a couple of terms — made me realise I really need to get serious about organising lesson plans and things like that, and being able to share information with parents more easily. So I basically looked up what kind of music studio options were available, and Octavia was the one that popped up. I saw it in a few Australian teacher pages, and I thought I'll give this a try, because I really liked that it combined the invoicing with also having the lesson notes options.

Do you directly invoice your students at the school?

That one I don't do, no. But I do directly invoice all my other students — I've got at least 20 students that I'm directly invoicing.

So for the school, is Octavia more for family communication and lesson sharing?

Lesson sharing, yeah. And the organisation week by week, because I just can't keep up with remembering all 30 students and what we did. So being able to have a note each week where I can go back and look, week by week, at what we've done — that has been so hugely useful to me.

What did you find most frustrating about the way you used to do things?

Probably the lack of continuity, and generally feeling like I'm constantly drowning in admin work. I always used to dread every holiday, knowing that I'd have to manually do up all the invoices and send them out one by one with an individual email. And for me that actually stressed me out quite a lot, having to do all of those individual communications.

I also found that when I was sending out invoices manually, people used to request changes to them a lot more, whereas I haven't had a single request to change now that I'm sending out invoices using the system. I think it feels like maybe it's more permanent or more official or something, and people just don't want to bother.

And then, obviously, very frustrating not being able to keep track all the time of what was happening. So I'd use notes apps and things like that to try and keep track of things I needed to do before the next lessons, but I wasn't doing that with every single student. So I feel like it's really improved my ability to lesson-plan efficiently and effectively.

What was your first impression when you started using Octavia?

I liked the interface. I liked how varied the different options were for what I could do with it, because I really like having everything in one place. So when I was looking for a system that could do the invoicing and the lesson notes and the communication — all of that stuff in one place — I really liked it immediately.

I could see from the interface how to access some of those different options. I think that was the main thing: I went, "Okay, this looks like it has everything I need, I'm just going to dive in and give it a try."

What feature do you find yourself using the most?

Very much the lesson notes have been the biggest thing for me. Since I started using it there's only been one invoicing term, so I've only been able to use that service once, but the lesson notes I've been using every week, and that has been as much for me as it has been for the students.

For the families who are reading them, it's been really, really useful to make sure the parents understand what's happening in the lessons. And it's kind of created this open channel of communication where I can do things like leave videos for them to watch of me playing, or someone else playing a piece, even including the musical symbols so that they understand what I'm talking about when I leave some theory homework or things like that.

It's also been particularly helpful for students who are more interested in learning about the background of music. I might upload a picture of sheet music with some annotations and ask them to continue the analysis, or send them a particular kind of quest to go and look into the background of something.

Just being able to have a really flexible place where I can write quite a lot of notes in one go, quite quickly, has made a big difference from just writing in the homework diaries. It also means I can do that preparation at home, or after they've left a lesson, and it doesn't always need to be in the lesson that I'm scribbling in homework — which has allowed me time for reflection and better note-taking.

So that's definitely been the thing I use the most. I think I've probably used it every day since I started using Octavia.

How has digital note-taking compared with writing in a homework book?

I love being able to easily edit, because sometimes I'll be scribbling in the book and then I'll realise, "Oh, I actually wanted to write more about this piece up here," but it's all handwritten, and then I have to write in the margins or whatever. So it's been nice that it's so editable.

Is there a favourite tool within the lesson notes?

I feel like the tool I've used the most is probably the ability to add video, because it's been really nice just being able to link an existing recording of a piece and go, "Have a listen to this, try playing along with this."

I've also used a little bit of the musical symbols. And in general I'm just using text notes — making a larger heading plus smaller bullet-point notes, and then supplementing with either the musical symbols or video. I want to try the metronome and the practice tracker, but I haven't had a chance to do that yet.

What do you think is saving you the most time or effort?

It's slightly difficult to say, because I think I'm spending more time than ever on lesson notes, but in a good way, because it's saving me the effort of having to remember everything. So I feel like my ability to lesson-plan is a lot more efficient than it has been previously, because everything is in one place.

I can just open up all the tabs for my students before I start, run through quickly — "What do I need to print out? What do I need to prepare?" So I'm spending a little bit more time writing out those notes than I would when I didn't have a system, but it's saving me time in the long run, and I think producing better results for me as a teacher.

I think the invoicing — being able to do a mass invoice — will also save me time. So far, because I was setting it all up and learning how to do it, it probably took longer than it usually would, but it felt less stressful for me, because I knew I could just click them all on and send, and then it would go out to everyone without me having to write all those individual emails.

Who would you recommend Octavia to?

I would recommend it to any music teachers. I think anyone who has a lot of students, or teaches across multiple campuses or places, would really benefit from using a system like this. It just keeps everything in one place and keeps it together.

So anyone like me who's a private teacher, but also teaching at a school, and also teaching at a university, I think would find it very useful. I think it's definitely going to be the teachers who have a lot on their plate — they'll benefit the most.

What would you say to a teacher who's thinking about trying it?

I would say just give it a go. There's the free month — try it, see if you like it, introduce it to the parents and see if it helps your communication with them, and see how it goes.

What would you say to someone who thinks they don't have time to set it up?

I feel like it saves you time in the long run — that has been my experience. So I would say take the time to set it up, and you will find you'll get that time back over the coming weeks and months.

How did you find the setup?

I thought it was pretty straightforward. There were a few times where I realised I was not going about things in the most efficient way, like the scheduling of students.

Because I have some students who have rotating schedules, and some who are fortnightly, and some who are weekly, it took me a little bit of time to figure out how best to schedule them. I hadn't quite found a good way to schedule the students who are fortnightly but come at the same time every fortnight, so I had been scheduling them for the full 10 weeks of a term and then manually deleting every second lesson.

When Hildy pointed out that fortnightly scheduling had since been added, I realised it must have arrived after I'd originally set everything up. That's fantastic — I'll be able to use that next time.

How did you come across Octavia?

I honestly think I just Googled "music studio invoicing software." It came from wanting to look for better invoicing software, to keep track a little bit better. And once I found it on Google, it was just one of the top results — I think it might have been a promoted ad. I remember it was definitely at the top of the results.

That was when I went into a few music teacher pages — I looked up Octavia as a keyword and found a few people who used it. It seemed like other people were using it, and it seemed like it's got all the things that I need.

Even though I was looking for invoicing software, it was the ability to write the lesson plans and keep track week by week with the scheduling that made me go, "Okay, I actually want to use this over something like Xero or other things." I was looking at ones that were sort of similarly priced but weren't going to come with the other benefits for a music teacher.