Introduction

Here is the Crescendo Music Education podcast – Episode 41. In this episode, I chat with my friend Wendy Rolls. She’s an incredibly clever lady. I’m very lucky to have her as a friend. But not only am I lucky to have her as a friend, I’m lucky to have her as a colleague, an amazing teacher and amazing music educator.

She’s now doing quite in depth work in the area of adolescent female voices. It’s just absolutely fascinating. I’m sure you’ll love it. Welcome to part one of my chat with the lovely Wendy Rolls.

About ‘Read the Episode’: Sometimes, we would rather skim visually than listen to a podcast! That’s a great way to learn too! The transcript of episode 041 of The Crescendo Music Education Podcast is below.

Episode 41 “Read the Episode” Transcript

Introducing Wendy Rolls

Debbie
And a big Crescendo welcome to Wendy Rolls. Hello, Wendy.

Wendy Rolls
Hello, Debbie.

Debbie
It is lovely to see you.

Wendy Rolls
It’s so exciting.

Debbie
And I will confess upfront that Wendy is not only an amazing person that you should all hear about. She’s also a friend of mine. So I’ll just you know, say that upfront.

Wendy Rolls
Why not? I’m very lucky to be your friend.

Wendy Rolls’ Biography

Debbie
Okay, I’m going to start reading just a short bio before we begin, so those people who don’t know you can have a little bit of background there. So Wendy Rolls enjoys working with singers of all ages as teacher, conductor and performer. She currently divides her time teaching singing between Brisbane Girls Grammar School, All Hallows’ School and her private studio, as well as conducting an auditioned Chamber Choir for middle school girls. With extensive choral and classroom music experience Wendy’s interest in adolescent girls singing was sparked while completing a Master’s of Music Studies in vocal pedagogy from the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University.

This became her PhD research exploring the pedagogical needs of adolescent female singers undergoing voice change. She also holds a Bachelor of Veterinary Science UQ, Bachelor of Education QUT and an Australian Kodaly certificate. She has presented for ANAX, Anchor and Kodaly Australia. Wow, just listening to that the first time I met Wendy, I was bit mind blown. Oh, so you were a vet, and you decided to change to music teaching? Okay, I think we need to just go there for a minute. But first listening to that bio, is there anything else you’d like to add to that, that brief summary that’s not there?

Wendy Rolls
I have led quite a tortuous life, I’ve had a very lovely life. But my path has changed quite a bit. I couldn’t decide when I was at school, my 10 year old self wanted to be a Vet, but the rest of me wanted to do music. So Vet came first and I was very fortunate to get into that. So that’s what I did. And I practiced for five years, and met my husband, so that was a bonus.

That was a big effort to meet a husband, but we’re still together and happy so it was a good investment. And that also, now I feel like I’m coming full circle, because that biological training and atomic anatomy and physiology is all stood me in really good stead now coming back to the science, as well as the art and craft of teaching music and singing. So yeah.

Debbie
Actually, I hadn’t even thought about that. Would you believe that? Now? Of course your focus on the mechanisms as well, but the science and the biology, I knew that was part of what were you doing but I actually hadn’t in my brain hooked that back to your medical training, but of course it links.

Wendy Rolls
Of course, yeah. Yeah. And veterinary anatomy. It’s all theme and variations. You know, we’re all mostly, we learned about mammals. So, so that was that? Yes. And then. Then when my children were little, I was trying to decide whether I should do the vocal ped masters. We were living in Goondiwindi, I’d come down one day a week, but or do education.

And I’m really grateful that I did education, because that was a wonderful, wonderful part of my career. And we’ll get to that later when I talk about who I’m grateful for. Yeah. So I feel like it’s been quite quite a lovely path that I’ve been very, very fortunate to follow.

Debbie
That’s wonderful. And let’s face it, it’s your path. So why not love it?

Wendy Rolls
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, yes, exactly. I’m choosing.

Highlights of Wendy Rolls’ Journey

Debbie
Yes choose love. So what would you consider the highlight or highlights of your journey focusing on the music education part since our audience is basically music teachers?

Wendy Rolls
Music teachers.

Debbie
What do you think would be the highlights of your journey?

Wendy Rolls
Yes, I think the very first thing I’d have to say was being dragged off to Melbourne for my first Kodaly conference and by Fay Duffield who is someone I’m in eternally grateful for and I’ve unfortunately lost track of. So I really need to try to find Fay Duffield because she was the classroom music teacher and I was volunteering as an instrumental teacher and I just had no concept of what classroom music was about. It was not part of my experience.

And it was completely foreign. I didn’t know anything about this weird solfa stuff or time names, rhythm names. And so she took me up there and it was like, wonderful. So, so I thought, oh, yeah, there’s actually really good stuff here to get your teeth into. And so that and then when I was doing education, I was so lucky to be able to come down and have a month at Clayfield College with Ann Slade as my supervising teacher and I learnt so much there in that month, that was the jam packed last month.

That was like six months, we had so many concerts and QYMA competitions and prep music night and it was amazing. And yes, seemed to be so much more than a month. And then I was super lucky to go back and teach there for 12 years, the following year. So that would be a highlight. Then I think going to the Con and starting, finally starting the music, the vocal pedagogy course there. That’s, I guess, they’re big signposts.

Debbie
That’s amazing. And I think that a lot of people who, of course I’m biased as a Kodaly based teacher, when you hit that first intense Kodaly course where you go, like you said, like all the lights, come on, you go, I can see, I can see sequence, I can see logic, I can see how I can lead all children to this understanding, you know that.

Wendy Rolls
Yes the equity of it was really attractive to me the fact that it was accessible to everyone and living in a regional area. Simple thing. Like when I did my AMEB theory exams, how do I practice my intervals? I don’t know. I know, if I play the piano, I’ll know what notes I’m playing. Once I learnt solfa, I was able to just do it myself, you know, a simple simple thing.

Debbie
Yes. And you’re able to actually teach how to do it, which I’m reminded when I did my first ever piano exam, I was 25, because I’d learnt piano but my parents were not musical at all, and weren’t highly educated. And they said to me, we want you to have opportunities. So took me off to piano. And then they said to this, you know, 10 year old kid, whatever age I was, nine, whenever I started. Do you want to do exams, and I went like no, like, it was a completely foreign thing.

Wendy Rolls
Are you mad?

Debbie
So I didn’t do exams. And then I ended up being a primary music teacher. So I thought I might go back and do exams, right? So i toddled off to, I asked around for the name of a teacher who would help me get through some exams and went to a very traditional, older, respected piano teacher. And, Rhona Morton it was, I went to Rhona Morton and she said, sit down and play this, play this. I said, I want to do an exam. And she said, I think you can do grade five.

Wendy Rolls
Holy Dooly.

Debbie
Do you think, okay, we’ll do that.

Wendy Rolls
Shouldn’t you start at grade one maybe?

Debbie
Yeah. But I had learnt for years. I could play. Yeah, but can I say I had never really played scales and stuff, like just a bit. But why would I? I’m not doing exams. I wanted to play John Paul Young. Yeah, take a look at me I’m yesterday’s hero, I wanted to do that stuff. Anyway. Sorry, this story is long. I actually wanted to get to the point of the story.

And that is we came close to exam time. And then it was oh there is an oral component. Oh, and I decided I would do Trinity and not AMEB. I can’t actually even remember why I made that decision. But I did. And then our there’s an aural component a few weeks before, you’ll have to identify a major chord that sounds like this. A minor chord sounds like this, augmented, this, this, you’ll have to do this, this, this and it was just sort of laid out before me now, as it was I actually could do that quite easily.

But only because I’d been going every Tuesday night to Clayfield College and doing this stuff with Judy Johnson going “do, mi, so, me, do” 1 Major, you know don’t mean in my head. Yeah, it was the training was there. But if it was not, I’m not saying I couldn’t have done major and minor triads.

Wendy Rolls
But you’ve got a language.

Debbie
Yes.

Wendy Rolls
You’ve got language and you’ve got the audition.

Debbie
Exactly. And I needed that and I would have been really quite panicked without that because that aural must be taught. It’s something I’d have….. Anyway. I’m raving. So Wendy feel free to go hush up Debbie. You’re allowed to say that.

Wendy Rolls
Ooh okay. The power okay.

Debbie
All right. Let’s talk gratitude, please include people that you feel have had have been of great influence to you.

For What Are You Most Grateful?

Wendy Rolls
So many. That’s a podcast in itself. But anyway, that’s only probably really interesting to me. But well, you know, like you I learnt piano, I did do exams but not as early as, I didn’t start as early as I may have liked. When I was in my late teens, Julie Price who was Julie Evans at the time, she was our youth worker at church. She said, Come and play keyboard in church with me, and she sat on the organ, I’m gonna say, like this a long time ago, but she played, oh did she play the organ or the keyboard? I don’t know.

And I played the piano. I learnt one song, I said, Okay, this is my song. I can play the song. And then she did the rest of the service but you know, and then it was two songs. And so that confidence of using those piano skills in a way, I had to keep going, I couldn’t stop because everybody else was singing. So I’m really grateful for Julie for her mentorship with that, and she is such a gorgeous human.

Fay Duffield I’ve already mentioned when I went to Goondiwindi, she was really encouraging and motivating. Jan Hungerford was my main singing teacher. I think I ended up I had about 10 over the last however many years. But Jan Hungerford is a beautiful singing teacher. And she encouraged me to just try new things. And she took me through my singing exams. Who else Brian Morris is my supervisor for my PhD and he’s part of the team with Irene Bartlett at the Con. And he’s such a, such an inspiring human too. And so encouraging.

Who else? Oh, the whole Kodaly community. You know, I just feel like I was welcomed with open arms. And I belonged from the moment I arrived, even though I wasn’t a real music teacher. It wasn’t until I was driving home after having successfully been offered the job at Clayfield, I was driving up the Toowoomba range, because I came down from Goondiwindi to Brisbane and back in the one day, and that’s 365 kms each way.

That was a big day, and I was driving home, floating home, going up the Toowoomba range, and I thought, I must be a real music teacher now, that’s amazing. Because I’ve had such a, you know, I don’t have a B Mus, you know, I had such an unorthodox pathway. But now I’m realising that actually, the Orthodox pathway is not as common as we might expect.

And I’ve spent my life trying to do trying to fill all the gaps and and that’s made me a really active learner, I think, because I’ve been consciously filling gaps, I’ve come to every PD that I could manage and that sort of thing. And I kept just doing degrees, which seems a bit ridiculous but anyway.

Debbie
I think if you looked up lifelong learner in the dictionary, I think the definition is Wendy Rolls.

Wendy Rolls
I don’t have any hobbies Debbie.

Debbie
I’m there, too, I’m with you on that.

Wendy Rolls
And then the last people I have to acknowledge is now the ANATS community as well. That’s the Australian National Association of Teachers of Singing, of which I’m the vice president of the Queensland community now, which is a bit amazing. But they have been so warm and welcoming too, so, you know, I think I’m really grateful for this community we belong to as music educators, I love it. So grateful. There you go.

Debbie
That sharing, welcoming part of the tribe. It’s wonderful, isn’t it? And and I think we need it in this job, too. Because it’s not an easy job to face by yourself. It’s much easier and joyous to do it together.

Wendy Rolls
Yeah. And we’re often siloed. And so I’m very grateful for the colleagues I have, you know, the different schools that I have, that you can just share, share your anxst, share your moments of, oh my gosh, did I do the wrong thing? Have I ruined someone’s life? And then to be reassured that perhaps not.

Debbie
All of our great ideas, but yes, you need both. You need someone. You need someone who will understand your worries. And you’ll need someone to give you that great inspiration and new approach and teaching ideas. It’s wonderful. Now this is fascinating. I want to talk about your work focusing on changing adolescent girl voices, girls voices. Now we know that boy’s voices change. Like it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? And I am a mother of boys. And the change was I know it was quite joyous in our place. It was quite celebrated and like it’s just fun.

But can I make a terrible confession to you Wendy Rolls as someone who is a music educator, until you you were on this path. So I knew about this through you, I really didn’t know about adolescent girls voices doing much at all. So I after making that big confession to whoever is listening to this podcast, and I probably should have known, because I’m like you, I go to 1000 workshops and courses, and I never stopped learning.

But it really didn’t come across my radar until you. So can you please, assuming there’s a few other ignorant people like me out there, tell us in very simple language though, tell us about girls adolescent voices.

The Adolescent Female Voice Change

Wendy Rolls
Yes certainly. So firstly, you are not alone. I was not aware of voice change pathways for girls. And I guess, but I knew from teaching my girls, but I hadn’t really been, the penny hadn’t dropped for me. I knew that there was funny stuff. Maybe I’m just retrospectively scoping. But really, I expected to learn about this in my course. And we didn’t, I’ll show you this book here, which is the most wonderful book. Is that back to front?

Debbie
No, it’s actually the right way for me, Teaching singing to children and young adults.

Wendy Rolls
To children and young adults by Jenevora Williams. And she is a gorgeous, gorgeous lady. She did a PhD on boys voices in Cathedral choirs in England, London, and she lives in Redding I think. I went and sat at her kitchen table and picked her brains about this. But in her book, which came out in 2013, or 2012, she has from memory, something like four pages about girls changing voices, and maybe eleven about boys and Jenevora is not the only one who has that in her book.

Apart from the books that I’ve now found that are about girls changing voices. If you look up a book on vocal pedagogy, that is what there will be. There’ll be a couple of pages about girls, but not very much, and then oceans about boys. Now maybe that’s the nature of our society. Maybe it’s the fact that we had boys cathedral class, I don’t know, but historically has not yet gained much attention. So I was really excited when I realised that I had found a little gap in the knowledge.

And luckily, it was a gap that I was intensely interested in. So girls voice change around about, and the model we use is by Lynne Gackle currently, but my colleague and friend Christina Grønborg is doing a longitudinal study of girls from, I think she’s doing grades five to grade nine. So that’s real commitment. She’s got maybe 30 students that she assesses, I think, four times a year, don’t trust me on these numbers it’s something like this.

And she’s measuring their voices, their hands, their feet and their height, in order to track what their voices do in relation to puberty, singing lessons, or no singing lessons. Nobody’s really done that before. Like, that’s, this is amazing that we finally got this, most of the work has pretty much been done with choirs, oh generally like this generally like that and then generally like that, you know. I don’t want to downplay the rigor of those studies, but the individual voices being studied is not it is, I believe, neglected.

So it’s exciting to be able to plug some holes in that space, if that makes sense. And I’m really grateful to all those lovely researchers whose work we were building on. So I’m not wanting to belittle that but this is very much watch this space. So the model of Lynne Gackle has phase 1, which is pre puberty, phase 2A and 2B, which is the middle of voice change, the murky stuff and then phase 3 is 16+, you know, when the voices settle down, and they’re like grade 10, and older in Australia, so you know, 15-16, things seem to settle down.

But between the ages of maybe 12, sometimes 13 and 14 through 14. So I’m thinking mostly year 8 & 9 is the murkiest time, sometimes a bit earlier, but that’s the murkiest tone of voice change. It becomes really uncomfortable for girls to sing, it becomes awkward, uncomfortable. They know something’s not working, and they tend to suffer in silence, because it’s not something that we celebrate, like you said, with your boys. I remember one of my sons coming in through the door and thinking their father had come home, you know, oh, my gosh, you’re not a little boy anymore, you know?

And so we don’t celebrate, that’s absolutely right. And so the girls suffer in silence and what they used to do and gain joy that opened their mouth and what would come out, doesn’t happen anymore. So because everything’s growing the brain can’t coordinate anymore. I use the analogy of my husband drives a big 4WD, I drive a Honda Jazz. When I get in his car, it’s like oh, I’m going to hit the parked cars on the side of the road, don’t ask me to park it because I don’t know how to drive it. It’s very similar that we don’t have that proprioception of our voice because the larynx changes shape.

In boys, the larynx gets taller and the vocal folds therefore get longer. And that’s why the boy’s voice has dropped by an octave. But in girls voices, the larynx doesn’t get so much bigger this way as just overall bigger and so it only drops by a third. And that’s the difference in pitch between a male key and a female key. So it drops by a third once it settles, alright, but in the middle, it’s a little bit like “mmmm hhhha” and we’ll come back to that in a minute. So and the other thing is because it’s all changing, then the nerves and the muscles driving the movement of the larynx and bringing the vocal folds together, they’ve lost all their fine tuning that they had previously.

And that fine tuning has to then redevelop. So that’s the other big symptom of voice change is that you get breathiness because the vocal, oh I should have brought my larynx up didn’t think about this thing, anyway, if you’re listening audio only, you won’t see that what I’m doing with my hands. Anyway, the vocal folds, they have to, the larynx tilts forward and down. So down to go high I’m talking about, but singing requires the vocal folds to come together.

And because of this change in the muscle and the nerve coordination and strength and things, the vocal folds don’t close all the way. And there’s usually often a gap at the back. Now boys can get this too, but it’s quite a feature of girls voice change. So that gap at the back allows breath to escape. And that’s when you get the breathy sound. So instead of getting “EEEEEEEE”, you get “eeeeeee”, can you hear the difference in those two sounds?

Debbie
So that’s one of the main outward indicators?

Wendy Rolls
Yes

Debbie
Breathiness?

Wendy Rolls
Breathiness and loss of power, because everything’s not working as well as it might. Loss of power and discomfort. It’s uncomfortable, and they know something’s wrong, and they become very despondent. So anyway, is that enough?

Debbie
That’s fabulous, do they still maintain control over pitch?

Wendy Rolls
Yes, I was just thinking I need to say something about that. Mostly, that can be a problem too. And that can fluctuate. It’s not quite like the boys where they have a [Voice ‘wobble’ sound] thing. So I need to talk about high and low. There’s two ways, two main ways, I’m generalising, but there’s two main ways the voice makes sound.

One is the full thickness of the vocal folds come together, and they vibrate. And that’s what we use in speech, mostly, unless you’re talking like this. But when we speak in what’s modal voice, it’s also called mechanism one or M1 for short. So the full thickness of the vocal folds are vibrating. That’s also called chest voice.

Now head voice is M2 is mechanism two and only the cover of the vocal folds is vibrating. So it’s a bit like, if you’re pulling your doona up in the night, and you only just get the cover of doona and the rest of it stays down.

Debbie
I hate that in winter.

Wendy Rolls
Yes, yes. So really, what you’re getting is just that vibration of the thin cover. It’s pretty special, because that’s how we get the lovely soprano sound. And it’s falsetto in men. So that’s that thin fold head voice, I call it, M2 mechanism two. There’s also mechanism zero, which is Bob Hawke or The Kardashians, that’s vocal fry.

And then and I am generalising here, but there’s also the the queen of the night or the mini revenue or the M3, the puppy whimper. So there’s a very cool Can I share with you a quick? Oh, are we running out of time?

Debbie
We’re not running out of time, never.

Wendy Rolls
Shelli Holcombe, who’s also someone I’m very grateful for she was my singing teacher at the Con. And she has this exercise she does, where you put your hand on your chest and go hey, have I done this with you? Hey, hey, and you feel the vibration under your hand.

Now for music teachers, well for teachers anyway, when you’re speaking in a class, you should feel that vibration there. Because that tells you you’re using modal voice that’s a good old check in. Hey. You know and then if you go woo hoo, the vibration goes, so why? Woo hoo. Hey. And then if you add the puppy whimper.

Debbie
Ooh I find that one hard.

Wendy Rolls
Oh, isn’t that funny? Zoom cut out the sound. I couldn’t hear your sound. Okay, so if you do those three, that’s M1, M2 and M3. It’s actually quite, it’s fun kids can do it. And it’s fun and gets away from that. Oh, that’s a girly voice, no call it M2. And it’s not a girly voice or it’s not a pop sound, you know, if you don’t want to sing, they don’t want to sing pop sounds.

So if you want to encourage people to use their whole voice, rather than just one part of their voice, their M1. If they’re having trouble escaping into that M2 area, this is quite a fun exercise for them to recognise that, oh, my voice actually has three different sections. And you can say things like, How comfortable are you in each of those places?

Which do you reckon is the most strong? Set your strong mechanism? And which one do you think is the one needing more work? And it’s taking away from I don’t sing high, to Oh, that’s kind of my voice I could use that? Maybe I could you know, and the old analogy of well, if you locked one arm away in a sling for six months, how strong would it be when you took it out? So do you really want part of your voice to go weak like that arm that’s been in a sling? So they’re just little tricks I use to encourage people to use their whole voice.

Debbie
I like that.

Wendy Rolls
I kind of went off track there.

Debbie
Yeah, but delightfully off track. That’s fine. So the PhD that you’re doing now you’re studying, you’re actually tracking some adolescent girls. And measuring?

Wendy Rolls’ Continuing Work

Wendy Rolls
I am.

Debbie
You’re doing that, wow. How long is that going to take you?

Wendy Rolls
So my study is a mixed study. It’s a case study, Christina’s study is purely quantitative, purely measured, and hers is the one that will take four years or something. But my study is for each group of girls over 18 months. So I start them at the start of year eight, and track them until halfway through year nine. This year, I’ve had seven students that are at the start of year eight, and I’ll track them, we’ve had two data captures.

So that was at the beginning of the year, despite all the COVID and floods and things. And then at the end of this year, just in November, and then towards the end of term 2, so May, June next year, we’ll finish, that will be them. But then I’m going to start another three. So all up I’ll have 10 participants, and it’s an embedded multiple case study. So each one, I will study each student individually. But I’ll also then be able to look at the group.

So it’s too small to be a full blown randomised control trial, because I am giving them singing lessons. And that’s part of my study, is what’s the interaction between them having singing lessons and undergoing voice change. And because voice change is quite variable in girls, there’s no guarantee that everyone will have a terrible time of it.

Some girls just sail straight through, I wonder if perhaps I sailed straight through, I don’t have any recollection. So maybe I didn’t struggle at the time. But hopefully, by having 10 students, I’ll capture a mixture of things. And my study is a mixed method. So it’s a mixture of qualitative and quantitative stuff, I’m getting them to do, I’m doing a phonetogram and a voice protocol into a machine, that they just say and sing things into the machine and the machine analyses it.

As well as that they’re singing a song, we’re singing The Parting Glass, that little folk song which is just perfect. I’m so grateful I found that song. And they sing that and I record it each time. And when I have three recordings, I’ll send that off to a panel of people who don’t know the girls, they won’t know which one they’re hearing first, second or third. They’ll rank them according to the changes that they hear.

Hopefully, they get better. But hey, you know, the other thing is, and this is the most important, I think in a way is I’m doing a reflection with them at each point. So that’s capturing their thoughts and their feelings and their knowledge about what’s happening with their voice. It’s a seven page thing, which has lots of ticks and flicks, but then they also write paragraphs about what’s happening in their voice.

Because it may well be that nothing that I do in my lessons actually helps the course of voice change, we don’t know, it may well be that all the exercises I teach them make them sound a bit better in the short term, but maybe it won’t actually shorten the course of what has to happen physiologically. But it may be that the voice lessons are a way of keeping them encouraged and keeping them singing while it’s happening.

So that when they come out the other end, they’re still singing and they don’t hate themselves, you know, because it is a common thing that well, I don’t know how common I don’t know, because it’s under studied, but it is I think that there are some girls who stop singing because they don’t like it anymore. It’s not fun. It’s uncomfortable. And it doesn’t sound any good. And people used to say Oh, I love it when you sing and now they don’t so now I just go into my corner and not do that anymore. Does that make sense?

Debbie
Yes, yes. It’s fascinating. And you’ve got to keep that momentum keep, doing that. We are waiting for your results. That will be lovely.

Wendy Rolls
Ah, yes. It’s so interesting. I have to tell you. Yeah, and I think we need to be aware of what’s going on inside these girls heads. We, I mean, I know that anxiety is such an issue. Perfectionism is such an issue. And I happen to work in two girls schools exclusively now, pretty much. Although, my home studio has boys as well, but I think that if we can attend to voice change as well, in a supportive encouraging way, then I think that’s got to be part of the package, part of the help.

Debbie
It’s got to help generally, the anxiety generally, and the perfectionism generally.

Wendy Rolls
And music making is part of feeding our soul. And belonging to choirs is part of feeding people souls. So I think if their enjoyment is being damaged or hampered in any way, we need to address that, we need to know about it, we need to arm them with knowledge at least, or just hold it even if we’re just holding their hands while they go through the process.

Debbie
Thank you for contributing to this knowledge for all of us because we need to know this too as educators don’t we?

Wendy Rolls
Yeah, I think so.

Debbie
I appreciate you and all of my colleagues, and hope this episode has been enjoyable and useful. Don’t forget, you’ll find the show notes on crescendo.com.au. I’d love a share, rate or review to help other music educators find this podcast. All I can be is the best version of me. All you can do is be the best you. Until next time, bye.

Sign Off

This podcast is brought to you by Crescendo Music Education, connecting, supporting, and inspiring music educators. You’ll find links to Crescendo’s social media platforms in the show notes. Please connect with me and be part of the Crescendo community. You might consider becoming a Crescendo member. You can access hundreds of files, worksheets, printables workbooks, repeat workshops, and webinars for a low annual fee and receive great discounts on events. So come and connect with me, Debbie O’Shea. See you in the socials.

Just for Laughs

As we know laughter relieves stress. Don’t lose sight of the funny side of life.

What do you call a man who can’t stand?

Kneel.

This is so many of these, I just had to put in one or two.

Links Mentioned in the Episode:

Book recommendations:

• If In Doubt, Breathe Out! (Introduces Accent Method breathing)
• Teaching Singing to Children and Young Adults

Wendy Rolls Contact Information:

• Website
• Facebook Group

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• Official Crescendo Page: https://www.facebook.com/CrescendoMusicEd/
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