Interview with Mei — Octavia User

Interview with Mei - Octavia User

Mei is a music teacher working across an independent school as a peripatetic teacher and a small private studio. She discovered Octavia while researching studio management platforms and has been using it for about a month.

Hildy: Why don't you just tell me a bit about yourself - your teaching setup, what you teach, and how long you've been teaching?

Mei: I'm actually quite a new teacher. I started in Term 3 last year, so that's when I first started teaching music. I began at two places - a school, as a peripatetic teacher, and then a music school in the evenings.

The music school unfortunately closed down last term, so I had to make a decision: move my students on to someone else, or take them on privately. I took them on. So I'm now covering those students as a travelling teacher, and I'm still working at the school on the side.

I'm also starting to think about whether the school would be open to using a management platform. At the moment, lessons and communication with parents are done old-school - in a practice diary booklet that students have to bring every time. And it hasn't been ideal. When students don't bring the book, I either have to go without communicating with parents - which doesn't help with practice support - or I'm sending emails through the school's messaging portal, which is a lot of extra work.

There's a lot that could be modernised, but I'm also aware they've done things a certain way for a long time. I'm planning to do another term using Octavia myself, then bring it up with my boss at the school to see if we can streamline how we record and communicate with parents. It's really admin-heavy at the moment, and I think that's one of the most overwhelming things people find about working in schools.

Hildy: What were you using before Octavia?

Mei: At the school, it was the physical practice diary booklets - students' assignments, comments to parents, and a space for parents to write back. At the music school, they were using ClassDojo for the younger kids, and for older students there was nothing formal - just a five-minute handover chat with parents at the end of every lesson, and whatever you'd written in your notebook.

Hildy: What about scheduling?

Mei: At the music school, the principal handled all the scheduling and invoicing - I never had to deal with that. At the independent school, they handle invoicing too, and I'm given a timetable to follow. But that can be tricky, because I have to work around school events. Every week we get a list of what's happening the following week and which year groups are affected, and we adjust accordingly. It's a lot of work - not just for me, but for our music coordinator who has to send all those communications out.

When students need to be moved, for high schoolers I message them through the school platform. For primary kids it's simpler - I just go and get them, and they have their lesson whenever their lesson is.

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

Mei: There were a lot of little bits and pieces everywhere - the same information being distilled into different formats for different people. Whether it was for a parent, a student, or administration, it was all fragmented. And then on the scheduling side, I'm still managing that manually for the school - it's literally a Word document table. I haven't yet had a chance to explore Octavia's scheduling fully for that, because it feels complex. But I'm looking forward to seeing if it can help, because it is a rotating schedule and things move around constantly.

Hildy: What was your first impression when you started using Octavia?

Mei: My first impression was that it seemed like a fairly new platform. I could tell it was still evolving, with new features coming. But when I started using it, I thought - this is actually pretty full-featured already. I didn't feel like much was lacking at all.

I had previously looked at a coaching app that had some music-related marketing, but when I got into it, it really wasn't applicable for music teaching - I got a bit duped by that. So coming to Octavia and finding it genuinely tailored to music was a relief.

It's definitely not generic. Music teaching has its own quirks - certain concepts are hard to write in plain text, you're drawing on YouTube, recordings, listening exercises. It's multi-dimensional in a way that most coaching software just doesn't account for. Octavia clearly gets that. The range of tools in the lesson notes, in particular, impressed me.

I also appreciated how the setup process works - it asks you the right questions early on. Are you a solo teacher? Part of a school? What's your billing policy? What's your scheduling approach? From there you get the features relevant to you, rather than having everything thrown at you and having to figure out what applies. That was a really good sign.

I'd summarise it like this: I immediately got the sense that Octavia was built by a music teacher, for music teachers - not by a software developer trying to help a music teacher build something. Hildy clearly understands both the music teaching side and how software needs to be structured to actually deliver what teachers need. That's quite a unique combination, and it shows.

Hildy: What feature do you find yourself using most?

Mei: During term, it's lesson notes - that's all I have time to touch. Then in the school holidays, I go deeper into the settings, invoicing, and scheduling. So it's a bit seasonal. But the core trio is lesson notes, invoicing, and scheduling.

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

Mei: Because I don't have too many students yet, it's less about the time saved on invoicing or scheduling, and more about having everything in one place. I can tell parents: go there - all your billing is there, all your lessons are there, all your future lessons. If it's not there, it's not booked. There's no ambiguity. That alone has been huge.

Hildy: Is there a favourite tool within the lesson notes?

Mei: I requested it, so I have to say - the music theory tool. I use the musictheory.net integration a lot. And the YouTube tool.

Actually, the YouTube tool is a bit underrated. Once a video finishes, it doesn't serve up more suggestions. My student doesn't suddenly see my viewing history or get pulled toward some other video. It's an isolated space - just the video, nothing else. That sounds like a small thing, but when you're in a lesson and you don't want social media algorithms trying to hijack your student's attention, it really matters.

Hildy: Who would you recommend Octavia to?

Mei: Any teacher who wants to modernise their studio and take control of how they run things sustainably - rather than becoming a slave to the number of students on their calendar. I'd also say: even if you're not especially tech-savvy, it's more intuitive than you'd expect. There are a few concepts to get your head around - like how student lesson credits relate to the schedule - but once it clicks, it makes sense. And once it does, I genuinely believe you'll save a lot of work.

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

Mei: The biggest thing is the free plan. You don't have to pay a monthly or annual fee if you don't want to, and even the free plan has enough to get a studio up and running. That's what I initially expected to stay on - I only have so many students. But after a month of using it, I'm struggling to imagine not continuing. I almost feel like I just want to support Hildy anyway, given how responsive and helpful she's been. So yes - even if you're not ready to fully commit, there's a free plan that lets you get started properly.

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

Mei: I'll offer myself as an example. I'd never dealt with invoicing or scheduling before - I was setting up my own private teaching for the first time. I did it all in the term break, over two weeks, while also being a near-full-time university student. And during that same period I was sending in bug reports and feedback and getting things resolved in real time.

It's definitely possible. You just need a computer and internet.

Hildy: How did you come across Octavia?

Mei: Some deep Googling. I was researching what other teachers recommended - going through Reddit threads, Facebook groups for music teachers, that kind of thing. I wanted to know what people were actually using, not just what came up first in a search result. Octavia came up, and the more I looked into it, the more I wanted to give it a go.

Mei has been teaching music since Term 3, 2025. She teaches privately and as a peripatetic teacher at an independent K-12 school.