Ep 6: Chat with Katie Wardrobe Part 1: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Ep 6: Chat with Katie Wardrobe Part 1: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Debbie:
Here is the Crescendo Music Education Podcast Episode 6.

Debbie:
A very warm welcome to this episode of the Crescendo Music Education podcast where I get to have a chat with Katie Wardrobe. It was such a wonderful chat that I’m afraid, yet again, we went for quite some time, so I’m splitting this episode into two. The first part, we’re going to talk about Katie’s bio, a little bit of a summary of her work, chat about her professional journey and how music technology and music education have come together to be her pathway. We talk quite a bit about her podcasting, her Midnight Music Community and the podcast that so many of us know and love. I hope you enjoy Part 1 of my chat with Katie Wardrobe.

Debbie:
Hello and welcome Katie Wardrobe! Yay! It is so good to see you. Even though we’re both in Australia, we’re like other sides of the country, you know.

Katie:
A long way away. A long way away. We haven’t seen each other in person forever.

Debbie:
No, and in fact that leads me to something. Just before this Zoom call, I was having a little look through the archives, and I found a photo that we’re in from 2014. I’ll get you to just have a little approve of it. It was at the Kodaly National Conference in Sydney.

Katie:
Oh yeah. It’ll be fine.

Debbie:
Yes, we might want to put that one in the show notes. Yes, that was a great conference. I still remember the the Japanese meal down around the corner.

Katie:
Oh, yes, I remember that, too. That was great.

Debbie:
It was the best bento box ever. Yeah. Anyway, funny how those little things stick. I really think that just about everybody listening to this knows you. Just in case they’ve never heard of Katie Wardrobe, I’m going to read your brief bio. Katie Wardrobe is a music technology speaker, trainer, consultant, blogger and podcaster who is passionate about helping music teachers through her business, Midnight Music, which, by the way, midnightmusic.com.au. She runs hands on workshops and presents regularly at conferences in Australia and overseas. As a keynote speaker or clinician, Katie offers online training and support to hundreds of music teachers all over the world through her music, technology, professional development, online community, the midnight music community, and also through her series of free monthly webinars which have been attended by more than 20,000 teachers in 2020 alone. Oh, my goodness. They’re big numbers. She is also the author of the keyboard and technology program for middle school students titled Studio Sessions published by Music Edu. Katie is also the host of the Music Tech Teacher podcast, which has more than 125 episodes. I’m sure nearly all of us tune in regularly to the Music Tech Teacher podcast. Welcome Katie Wardrobe.

Katie:
Thank you. It’s so good to be here. Yes, I probably should have updated that we’re up to Episode 135. I’m about to record 136 and 137 today just to knock them off. That should be good too.

Debbie:
That’s been batching isn’t it. Let’s just do all the recording.

Katie:
It’s called batching. We love batching. Yeah. Got to try and batch. It’s such hard work even doing it then anyway but I do try to do that as much as possible. It makes a difference in time because you’re getting the flow of writing and then you get in the flow of recording and then you get in the flow of editing and you just do them all at once.

Debbie:
I knew she’d set me high. In fact, Episode 2 of this podcast is actually about batching in the context of planning for music educators so there we go.

Katie:
I feel like I’ve done an episode about that too about being more productive. That’s one of the ways you can really be more productive because you just get in the flow. I get in the flow of writing, for instance, and it’s just easier to knock out a few and then get that done and then record until your voice gives way.

Debbie:
I love it. That was only your brief bio. Is there anything that you want to add to that that you’d like everybody to hear?

Katie:
It’s not really much. I mean, it still stands. Everything is true and still what I do today and what I have done for years and years. Of course, the last couple of years have been a bit different. Not any in-person workshops or conferences. I’ve just done two. I did one in December 2021 and that was my first one in more than two years. It was so weird and good at the same time. I’m not kidding, I think everyone was on a high. All the music teachers, we were just on a high because we were in person for the first time. It was just great and then I’ve just did one recently in Adelaide, so that was also good. First plane trip in like two years as well. But yeah, that’s about it. Everything’s been online and I’m super lucky because everything I was doing was online anyway, and I just continued it through all the lockdowns, the 7000 lockdowns that we had anyway so it worked well.

Debbie:
And boy, oh, boy, did a lot of people turn to you for help?

Katie:
Hence the more than 20,000 people in webinars. I just sort of added that up as a rough start. I feel like there’s been a lot of people attending webinars and of course there’s repeat business in that number as well. I thought, well, if you add up the attendance for each one during that time, it was insane. I mean, it’s dropped off again now because I think a number of music teachers particularly are kind of like, ‘Yeah, we are just done with technology for a while and I just need to go back to singing and playing’, which I completely get but at that time it was just such an urgent need and it was all the things that I wish teachers had been doing for years and kind of secretly I was in a way a little bit happy because everyone was forced to do all these things that I thought, you know, you really should take advantage of making videos of yourself teaching or you could hop online with a composer who’s across the world. Then suddenly everyone did learn what Zoom was and what making videos was like or teaching asynchronously. So there was a lot of good things out of it, too, even though I get that you just need to get back to like in person and making music and stuff.

Debbie:
The good thing is that these skills that we have learned in this time and that you’ve helped guide so many of us through, we’re going to keep the best bits of that moving.

Katie:
Yeah, I really hope so. I have had some teachers particularly, I deal with a lot of teachers in the States and some are just like, ‘Yep, I’m done with that. Forget it all, back to normal’. I think it would be sad if they did not continue to use some of those skills that were learned during that time, because I think there’s so many benefits regardless of COVID and lockdowns and things, there’s so many benefits to using some of those things to your advantage. And yeah, I think it’s a great thing to do so I do hope people will continue to use some of those things.

Debbie:
I think most of us will, even if it’s just a temporary go back to real. We’re very lucky here, we hardly were lockdown at all. I’m not speaking for the lower end of Australia. Literally the lower end, you know what I’m saying.

Katie:
Oh my gosh. Yeah, yeah, I do. I really do know. It’s just funny in Melbourne, anytime someone brings up lockdowns and the hardships that they suffered through. You know if you are not in Victoria, not in Melbourne. I’m sorry. Do not talk to us.

Debbie:
Yeah. We do not understand. No. The fact I couldn’t go to the shops for one week, you know, and you know they made me wear a mask sometimes.

Katie:
Oh, it’s so funny. It’s not. It wasn’t funny at all, but…

Debbie:
Not at all. So your professional journey, I listen avidly to your podcasts and know a little, probably more about you, you share a lot of your journey in little bits as we go through it. You had a lot of experience with technology in music and etc., and you’ve had this music education side. Just from my perspective, you’ve ended up with this marriage of both, you’ve got your technology and your music education and you’ve married them together in what you’ve sculpted as your profession. Would you say you reckon best of both worlds?

Katie:
I think so, yeah. I think it’s important for people to know that I was kind of dragged kicking and screaming into the technology side of things. That was not something I aimed to pursue, it’s not something I studied. I did all of school and university with absolutely no technology whatsoever. Even though finale software was around when I was at university, there were like five people using it in this mysterious computer lab upstairs at Melbourne University, and I was not one of them at all. I hand wrote all of my music assignments and the most techie thing that I had was an electronic typewriter. So, you know, that was my essays. You’d handwrite everything and literally cut, copy, paste, and highlight and then type your good copy at 3 a.m. the day before the essay was due or whatever it was. I mean, that was my life. I never used technology at all really. Then it was after university, I did get a job at Monash University just doing admin work and I suddenly had to use this thing called Microsoft Word. I’m like, what on earth is this? Actually it was even before Microsoft Word that you know it today I used Word Perfect and I’m totally showing my age, but some people will remember that it’s a black screen with like orange text on the screen, you had to know shortcuts in order to do bold and italics because there were no buttons on the screen. I wasn’t techie at all and then I just kind of got thrust into it. The job at Sibelius, I was using notation software by then and then got that job, but that was also me getting thrown in the deep end because I knew nothing about operating systems. Working at Sibelius, you had to help people, some had PCs and some had Macs. I had never used a Mac before, at that point I was Windows and just did not know all this mysterious stuff. They were ringing me asking, “How do you enter triplets?” And that is “No, my sound doesn’t work”. That was the question or I can’t register the program like it was nothing that exciting.

Debbie:
Did you ever get to say ‘turn it off and on again’?

Katie:
Oh, yes, totally because it’s actually a thing. It’s actually seeing people listen, turn it off and on again. It was just like that was hard work, but I learned so much on that job and then after that, that’s when I kind of went, you know, this technology thing is kind of good. I started to expand my repertoire of tech and, and listen to other people talking about technology and education, not music specific at all, but just technology and education. And that’s how I ended up there. I still remember the pain and the fear of opening up software and just going, I don’t know what to do and I don’t know where to start and I’m too scared to do anything. I remember that while I’m running workshops now, even 12 years down the track, I still know that feeling so I really can relate to people who feel like that in my workshops and I’m like, okay, we’re just going to give it a go, do something small.

Debbie:
Yeah, good. Never ever lose sight of that feeling because there will always be those people. My own children have helped me with that because I’ve opened a new program or whatever and I’ve gone “Scott, Scott, come and help me with this”. And he goes, “Oh, look, just have a go”. “No, no, but what if I do something wrong?” Just undo or just shut it down? I thought, okay, get brave. I’m not going to break this thing if I make a mistake. The new generation is really good at that. Just do it.

Katie:
Yeah. And that is the only difference between ‘us and them’ is the lack of fear of having a go. They don’t know more. They don’t know how to use the tech in music education. They don’t know how to compose in technology because they don’t know how to compose, you know. So you’re there to guide them with that side of things, but they are just less afraid. They’ll click buttons and let’s just see what happens. It’s fine. Yeah, and it will be fine.

Debbie:
Yeah and I think the braver you get, there you go, this is Debbie’s tech tip. All right, Debbie’s tech tip. ‘Just have a go’. And if it’s a mistake, it’s probably not going to be life shattering, is it?

Katie:
No, it’s really not. Just have a go. Just save a lot.

Debbie:
Now, can you give us a summary of what Midnight Music does? It was in the bio there. And of course, anything you share with me afterwards, I’ll put all the links in the show notes where you can connect with lots of people because people will want to if they haven’t already but tell us about Midnight Music.

Katie:
Everything’s really comes back to professional development for music teachers, focusing on the technology side of things. We have, I say ‘we’ now because it’s not just me in the business, there’s a few people, you know some of my people quite well as well because we share some of those people. But, you know, we put out free content. Free things are like blog posts and YouTube videos. I do these webinars which are monthly. I’m dialing back a little bit so sometimes monthly, sometimes every other month at the moment, those as well and the podcast too. There’s lots of free resources and free articles and how to’s and lesson plans and that sort of thing. But then, the next level up is people who want to take courses that I’ve put together and have online. They are all inside the community so we call it the Midnight Music Community, not a very imaginative name, but I had to make a quick decision and that was it. There’s a whole training library inside there so if you want sort of the step by step instructions that the blog post can’t possibly cover, you know, there’s like, for instance, a five module course about using Canva in the classroom, which I know you’re familiar with. I had in my plans to make one about how to create videos, different types of videos that I know music teachers want to create. I’d had that on my to do list for ages and then when the pandemic hit, I’m like, now just get it done, get it done. I did that one as well, probably a year and a half ago or so. That’s really detailed step by step showing you exactly how to do things in the software. That’s just a couple of examples. There’s lots of things. I’ve just recently actually updated this whole page which details everything that’s in this training library. To be honest, I was a little bit worried because it’s a kind of overwhelming. There’s a lot of stuff there but some are shorter courses as quick training things or quick tips and then other things are longer and in depth like Canva, of course, or the video course. But yeah, that’s really the bulk of it. The other side of that paid community space is a forum where you get personalized help from me. This is where I do spend my time. I just can’t do a lot on social media anymore, there’s just not enough hours in the day to answer lots of questions in Facebook groups and on Instagram and stuff, it’s just too much. I’ve been overwhelmed by it. I do spend every day in my own community because people are paying to be there and I get to help people one on one. I’ve got my friend Amy Burns, who’s in the States. She’s an elementary teacher in the United States, and she’s fantastic. She helps me with that, we basically make people videos. It’s like, okay, how do you do this in this software? And whoever gets there first, we actually have a little personal competition to answer questions first, but we’ll make a video, we’ll open up, you know, Canva or Sibelius or whatever it is and just go, okay, to do your thing just click, click, click, here it is. People get a nice, proper response rather than a hit and miss response that you might get in a Facebook group. That’s why people like being there but that’s really the bulk of what I spend my time on is adding to that library. Designing courses and I’m about to update because of technology, you know, you make a course and then it’s almost outdated as soon as you’ve published it because technology gets updated and you’re like, ‘Oh, no, GarageBand had all these changes’. You just pray that the change is not going to be too significant because you hope that people can actually still follow along if it does change.

Debbie:
Yes, but the good thing about this medium is that it’s a course, it’s not a print book that you have 50,000 copies in a warehouse.

Katie:
I know. I know, this is why I’ve never written a book. I’ve been asked to write books over the years just by different publishers or people suggesting it or whatever. I’m just so reluctant because of that reason. As soon as it’s published, like it’s literally physically published, I would have to do something which is kind of generalized, not specific, but you can’t, it’s really difficult to do that. I veer away from it. Yeah, yeah. There are lots of textbooks out there and lots of people I know from being online together and stuff, they’ve all published books and I feel like it’s a necessity. It’s like a business card, you know, you need to have a book and I guess I’ll do it at some point. But yeah, my reluctance is there.

Debbie:
I mean, it would be great to have a more, you know, you’d have to think about how to make it a bit more general and things like, you know, the concept of batching and how that applies and how…so more approaches rather than this is how you use this software step 1, 2, 3. I guess if you’re very lucky when you’re auditing your programs, there might only be two of the modules out of five that you have to use.

Katie:
Yeah, I found that with Canva actually. I updated the Canva course last year and yeah, I went through thinking, oh no, I’m going to have to like remake every video but in fact it wasn’t at all. In recent years, I’ve gotten clever about the way I actually make the videos in the first place. I’ll often have a whole section about the lesson plan first. And this is what we’re going to do, like musically, this is what’s covered and this is how it happens and this is how it can work and the technology will fit in here. Then separately there will be the ‘how to’ videos. That’s been so much better because then you’re not updating all of that part of it too. It’s a standalone video which talks about the concepts and the lesson and stuff and then separately the software. That way you can actually apply it to multiple software programs. One of the things I would suggest to teachers is, when you’re going to be brave about using technology is to remember that once you’ve learned one notation software program, they all kind of work the same way. They’re not identical, but you’re looking for the same things in menus or the same techniques, or you go, Hey, I know Sibelius can do that thing, probably Noteflight can also do that. I just need to find it. To me, that’s one of the biggest tips and that’s probably the approach I take to writing a book, in notation software you can copy and paste to do X, Y or Z or you can transpose by selecting everything and moving it all up. I mean, that’s the same in every program and same with all those programs like GarageBand and Soundtrap and BandLab. They are all kind of the same. I have a GarageBand course, for instance, but I deliberately made all of the introductory videos, the music related stuff, the lesson plan ideas are all separate so that then I could have Speaker2: GarageBand specific instructions and then also Soundtraps specific instructions, and then BandLab, because it’s the same in all the programs, there’s just slight differences and the screen looks a bit different. To me it’s the same course for all three of those programs. It’s just the actual how to changes so that’s worked a lot better. You’ve got to get smart with it when you’re planning stuff. Like, who would choose to do this?

Debbie:
Can I just say I’m speaking on behalf of every music educator on this planet. Thank you for doing all that work. Wow!

Katie:
Any time. Any time. Yeah, so that’s the bulk of how I spend my time. The other thing is these live workshops and conferences which just haven’t happened for a couple of years, but hopefully getting back to those. I need those for myself. It’s the connections with other people and the in-person stuff that’s unplanned when you go to those event. Everyone has experienced that I’m sure, and it’s so necessary really to just have those connections with people. So hopefully this year or next year, start it up again.

Debbie:
Oh, I hope so. And yes, we’re looking forward to that very much. So you’ve ended up being basically an entrepreneur.

Katie:
Yes. Who would have guessed, right?

Debbie:
Yeah, you weren’t in high school going, ‘I just want to run my own business’, I imagine.

Katie:
No way. Who would want to do that? I never thought that at all. In fact, now I’ve got my two teenage boys and actually I’ve encouraged them and they are both doing business management at school as a subject. They’re both doing it 1 year ahead, they’re sort of doing advanced placement stuff for it because I know that no matter what job you end up in, there’s a high potential that some part of your working life will involve you doing something entrepreneurial in a way, like even on a small scale, really. In 2014, I went to this amazing conference for online business people, it was a really small intimate thing and everyone was saying that we’re all entrepreneurs and I’m like, Who, me? Me, I’m not! And I thought, okay, well, I guess I am. At the time, that was five years of being into my business and I’m like, Okay, I guess that’s what I am accidentally. Yeah, yeah. It’s hard. Yeah, it’s weird. It’s weird, but good. I’ve enjoyed it.

Debbie:
What do you reckon, being an entrepreneur, what’s the trickiest bit but what’s the best bit? I want both sides of the coin.

Katie:
The best bit is for me is being able to choose how I spend my time every day. This morning I needed to get a blood test done so I just went and got a blood test done at 8:30 a.m., drove home and I thought, you know, I really should eat breakfast now. I’m not on anyone else’s timeline except my own. If I feel like recording a podcast at 9:30 p.m., I can do that. I can work 2 hours today and I might work 10 hours tomorrow, I can work pretty much from anywhere in the world. I could literally up and go to another country and quite happily work there and still run my business from anywhere, that is a huge, huge benefit. The drawbacks, I mean, gosh, you can relate to this I’m sure, the drawbacks are, the insecurity of you doing the right thing. Why would anyone want to learn this from me? Who am I to say, all of that sort of imposter syndrome. For a while, in the early days, I was like, ‘Should I just get a job so that I have a paycheck coming in every two weeks or every month or whatever it is that’s that side of things’. It’s quite hard because you’re literally doing everything yourself. I had to change my sole proprietor business to a company and that side of things, this is why I want my boys to do business management, because they’re learning why would you do that? At what point do you do that in your business journey and what’s the benefits or what’s the drawbacks? And you have to switch to a company and setting up websites and registering domain names, it’s just terrifying. I know now how to do all of that.

Debbie:
It’s a whole new set of skills. It’s a whole career on top of the career of being an educator and and getting on top of the technology type things.

Katie:
I’m lucky because I’m doing it as my main job and I’m not trying to teach full time or even part time like other people I know. I’ve got a number of music teacher friends who do have a side business, you included. And you know, I’m not trying to do it at the same time as as having like a regular, normal job. It’s really hard work. I don’t mind helping people out when I can with all of that side of things because it just took so long to find the information or to work out what’s the best thing and then you can find information. It’s not often Australian specific, we need Australian specific information as well.

Debbie:
Well, Katie, when you have a bit more spare time, you could do another podcast like setting up for young new entrepreneurs in Australia. I’d listen to that. Yeah.

Katie:
I actually had a friend, an Australian PE teacher who doesn’t teach PE anymore because he’s got his whole business thing going, but he started a podcast called Teacherpreneur or something like that.

Debbie:
Yes.

Katie:
He had a series, he hasn’t continued it as far as I know, but he had some podcasts based on teachers who wanted to have a side hustle or grow something and then maybe move away from teaching eventually. But yeah, that’s the main struggles I think. The other struggle, which is a strange one for me, is too many ideas. Too many ideas.

Debbie:
Oh no, no, no. I hear you.

Katie:
Way too many people who say they don’t have enough ideas for their blog or whatever. I’m like, how? I don’t even know what that is.

Debbie:
Well, what you want to do is say, you want some of mine.

Katie:
I know you’re not into music education, but hey, I’ve got 7000 ideas in a spreadsheet.

Debbie:
Look, that’s one of the reasons why we all love you in your work because it’s never stale and you’re never short of ideas. I appreciate that. I appreciate all that stuff that goes on in your head. Believe me.

Katie:
You got to turn it off sometimes. That’s okay.

Debbie:
Oh, I know, but is it that hard? Yeah. Especially when it decides to switch on at like 3 a.m..

Katie:
Yeah or in the shower, is the worst. It’s like scientific proof that that’s a thing, you know, because you’re doing something but it’s not like a thing that occupies a lot of your headspace so then your brain’s got room to think.

Debbie:
That is, honestly, I can honestly say that’s probably my time of most, if you need to call them lightbulb moments or when things solidify and clarify the mess to make a decision. Yeah, it’s in the shower. What is that?

Katie:
Totally. I don’t know. It’s totally in the shower.

Debbie:
Yeah, I’m with you. Okay. Now, those of you who are just tuning in, we’re actually speaking about ideas in the shower, in case you’re misinterpreting. Now, I want to get back to your podcast because I love love listening to your podcast. I get excited when I see a new episode, even though I don’t use all the tech tools, I still love your podcast and I know that most people would certainly agree with me. I want to know, what is it about podcasting that you love? I know I’m new to this thing and I already just love it, but what do you love about podcasting as opposed to the other arms of your business?

Katie:
Well, it’s a couple of things. I like the format, as in, for me to make a YouTube video that’s like 5 minutes long that shows people how to do something in a software program. A five minute video takes hours, it’s ridiculously long, like it’s hours of time and it seems so silly, but it does. Like if you want to do it the way that I want to do it, like, you know, fairly hopefully high quality. But with audio, I find that it’s just much easier to press record and there’s not a lot of editing of my podcast episodes. It’s just a solo episode, me talking, I can hit record and pretty much just do the whole thing. Occasionally I’ll pause and maybe re-say something or whatever, but there’s not a lot of editing, so it’s kind of an easier process. The harder part or the longer part is the planning. I mostly have bullet points, but I do plan fairly carefully what I’m going to say. Then if I’m doing an interview with someone, that’s even easier in a way because they are generating the content for you. You don’t have to do as much planning. You need to do some to work out who they are and so it’s kind of a great thing. The reason I really wanted to do the podcast in the first place is because I learn so much from other podcasts. I’ve really started listening back in about, I think 2008 or so was when I first discovered like, what is this podcasting thing? I still find people today that I speak to, teachers are still saying that same thing, like what is a podcast anyway? I think they’re more in the the general population. People know they’re more readily visible and they’re advertised on television and mentioned in TV shows that you watch now and that sort of thing. People kind of have an idea of what they are. I just learned so much over the years through listening to podcasts and I love that on the go I can be cooking in the kitchen, I can do a Sunday cooking thing where I’m making like two or three meals in a row, washing up, cleaning the stove and I’ve listened to like four podcasts and I’ve found things that I didn’t know about. I learned stuff or it’s just an interesting story perhaps. I really felt like I wanted music teachers to be able to take advantage of that too and to have that experience of learning something on the go so that’s why I really like it. What about you? Tell me about you. You’ve only just started doing your own one, obviously.

Debbie:
I’ve been desperate to do this for years.

Katie:
I know, I feel like I’ve mentioned it many times, Oh, I should do that, she says.

Debbie:
Oh, I want to. Oh, like you, I listen to podcasts and love them, love them, love them and learn so much from them. It fills that dead time. For me it’s driving time or if I’m walking by myself. I just desperately felt like it was what I was meant to do because I know so many and I knew I wanted to do some chat type episodes because I just know so many amazing people. Like, I just love talking to them and being with them and I don’t know, hoping some of their awesomeness rubs off on me or something. I thought, what are my strengths? Okay. And I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my weaknesses, which is a problem. It’s time to start thinking about my strengths. And I talk a lot.

Katie:
Me too.

Debbie:
I like communicating sometimes effectively, hopefully often. I have these great connections with people. When I started Crescendo in 2000, wow, 22 years ago! Fairly quickly, I came up with my mantra/values, whatever, which is connecting, supporting and inspiring music educators. What better way to do it than through a podcast. I’m connecting, I’m supporting. Yeah, I’m inspiring. Hopefully, I mean, you know, so I just thought, no, I’ve got to do this. And I was really quite scared of doing it. Time is a problem but then I went, Do you know what? No, listen to Katie Wardrobe. All you need is, okay. I got my microphone and I got my little stand, so I made it easy so I can just come in here, switch on.

Katie:
That’s what I did, too. I think we might have talked about that at some point. Yeah. So Debbie and I both have a boom arm attached to our desk which holds the microphone. It’s great because you can swing that arm out of the way when you’re not using it, swing it back in so you don’t have to find a stand. My microphone is plugged in permanently and I’m plugged into an audio interface. I don’t know if you are or directly into your computer, one or the other. So it’s just kind of there. I have my headphones as well. I’ve got a little headphone stand even so they don’t get all in the way and it’s just great. So yeah, it just having it there and ready I think is one of the keys. I think that’s true of tech all the time, if it’s really difficult to set up in your classroom with the kids, you’ll never do it. You just need to have things that are kind of ready to go and easy to get to. If the kids have devices, it’s there and it’s ready for them. But yeah, I really love it too. I really wanted to do a podcast episode every single week and it’s hard and you know, I’ve just come now to the point that I’m going to release one every week if I have one recorded. And if I don’t, it might be two weeks or three or maybe a few months later, I had a little impromptu break not planned at all, last year. I just couldn’t do it for a while. I just couldn’t deal with it and that’s okay. It’s back.

Debbie:
Yeah, but I do think too, it’s slightly different when you’re at your number of episodes because you have a whole lot of loyal listeners. When you pop back into whatever player we’re using, then we’re going to listen, you know.

Katie:
Yeah, that’s true. I do think I started to have people say to me, Are you doing the podcast anymore? I think my podcast app is broken because none of your episodes have come through for a while. And I’m like, No, that’s because there aren’t any, they’re back.

Debbie:
I’m shooting for every fortnight, but because I’m still working full time and it’s such a big job when I hit school term and I’ve got so much to do even for school this holidays. I’m just going to have to talk about batching. I’m going to have to be a super batcher. It’s going to have to be holidays, when I hit term, probably I could send a fortnightly thing about the new release, but that’s it. They’ve got to be recorded, done and dusted. And I also have had to employ someone because I don’t have the time to do all of the editing and uploading and da da da da da. So I just thought, nope.

Katie:
The uploading part, yeah.Just got to get that done. Yeah, I have someone to do that too and it’s just easier. You can just do the bit that you need to do that you need to spend your skills.

Debbie:
Yes, the bit that only you can do. I listen to my business podcast. You focus on the bit only you can do. Yeah.

Speaker2:
Yep. That’s, that’s definitely okay.

Speaker1:
This podcast was brought to you by Crescendo Music Education. Connecting, supporting and inspiring music educators. In the show notes, you’ll find links to Crescendos social media platforms. Please connect with me and be part of the Crescendo Community. You might consider becoming a Crescendo member. For a low annual fee you can access hundreds of files, worksheets, printables, workbooks, repeat workshops, webinars, and receive great discounts on events. Come and connect with me, Debbie. Okay, see you in the socials.

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