Have You Tried Tonebase? Please Share Your Thoughts About It

Pallas

I'm looking specifically for feedback about trying Tonebase. In this thread, I'm not looking for why someone didn't try it (or isn't interested in online resources). I really love the Tonebase videos I've watched on YouTube and I have a big appetite for video piano content. I'm wondering what you get out of Tonebase, if anything, and also if you have needs that you were wanting it to meet but it's not meeting them, I'm interested in heading about that (the more objectively framed the better, as I don't want to trigger any bashing).

Thanks in advance for the help.

HeartKeys

I use it about 2-3x per week. For me, I leverage this resource as a cocktail between some basic fundamental techniques, combined with some MasterClass type of teachings. Now that I've begun that PACT commitment though, I'm trying to use it every day.

Even for someone who's not a classical pianist, I find their thoughts to be very applicable to the piano as a whole. I enjoy listening/ watching, while having my VST open in the background, playing along.

I've gotten more out of Tonebase than I have, from piano teachers. Perhaps that's because of my own objectives, though, which is to play in my own way (genre, notes-wise), but applying some best practices in piano technique.

Meanwhile, the Tonebase YouTube channel seems to have so many resourceful videos, that one could argue that subscribing to the paid content might not be wholly necessary 🙂

PianoMonk

HeartKeys Meanwhile, the Tonebase YouTube channel seems to have so many resourceful videos, that one could argue that subscribing to the paid content might not be wholly necessary

Totally agree.

ranjit

I tried out their free trial a while back. They definitely have some good pedagogical content. Having a teacher is better, but it still forms excellent supplementary material.

bwv543

I was subscribed for some time, first time as beginner and some years later as an intermediate.
There is a lot of content and some of it is very good. Very helpful - for me - were videos from Seymour Bernstein, Boris Berman and Boris Giltburg. Also from Magdalena Baczewska and Leann Osterkamp.

I think every piano student can benefit from Tonebase if you have time to regularly watch videos. Some of these videos are good structured und not long, but some are maybe too long for the containing content, especially from the Tonebase-own teachers. There is a lot of variety presented, it's like recordings of different masterclasses. And I think that is the main difference to other piano online resources - it's not a systematic approach, but a compilation of tips and tricks. There are many different teachers, who contradict each other. Bernstein and Berman and Penelope Roskell have their own vision and vocabulary and they are not easy compatible with each other. And there are also many Taubman videos with a completeley different approach. As a beginner I was paralyzed by all the choices and different opinions.

For a beginner there are better organized alternatives. For me the best overall technical school is Entrada from Bernsteins student Fred Karpoff. Piano Online Academy is also very great. I was subscribed for both of them and can recommend them more than Tonebase for your first years of piano playing.

For learning piano pieces the best videos for me were videos from Denis Zhdanov. Very systematical - from first bar to the last everything is explained in detail. Followed by Entrada. And of course Piano Online Academy - also very systematical and there is a lot of content there. I think more than on Tonebase. Especially for beginner-intermediate stuff.

What makes Tonebase unique is variety and some of the teachers are world class performers. But it's really more like visiting a masterclass, not having a teacher. These videos don't explain a piece from beginning to the end. The teachers pick some bars and sections, give their tips and share inspiration and love for the music.
And a lot of the pieces on Tonebase are advanced. Chopin Etudes and Ballades, Rachmaninov, Ravel and Liszt.
So I think for the advanced player Tonebase is the best, but maybe not for the intermediate student.

Damien

bwv543
I tried Tonebase last year and I also thought that it was more for advanced players, although I looked recently and they seemed to have added more beginner instruction.
Thanks for the mention of Entrada. I had not heard of that, and Fred Karloff works at Syracuse University, which is only about an hour from me. I will investigate it.

JB_PT

Excellent write-up by bwv, and I agree that it might be most helpful to advanced players.

I signed up for a trial (30 days?) a few years ago. This was when I had just dropped a teacher and expected to be on my own for awhile. I enjoyed a lot of the video series, but within a few weeks I felt like I was pretty much done with it. Too much advanced content that's not helpful to me yet. Forums not very active (at that time anyway). I also found the livestreams to be really disappointing. I was interested in a lot of the topics but I wanted to watch them later and found that frustrating. They were all too long and full of fluff and it wasn't easy to forward through them to find the "meat."

Unfortunately this was the one time that I forgot to add a calendar reminder to cancel before the trial was up. They did not send a courtesy reminder before they charged me for a full year. 😣 By then (or soon after) I started working with my current teacher and was much less interested in online content. I got very little use out of it for that next full year...

Pallas

JB_PT Unfortunately this was the one time that I forgot to add a calendar reminder to cancel before the trial was up.

Ouch! Thank you very much for sharing your perspective. It's helping me collect my options and think about what my needs are, and how best to meet them. Solid gold value!

Sgisela

I’m subscribed, but at the moment, between work (quite busy) and my piano lessons, I just don’t particularly have the time or interest to spend a lot of time on Tonebase. However, my overall impression is that much of the content is geared toward advanced intermediate to advanced players, so if you’re not in that category, I think there is something there for you, but I’m not sure how much. It’s also very much geared toward classical piano, so if your interests are elsewhere, it may not be a great fit.

Additionally, if you’re fairly advanced, you may have your own ideas about what you want to play, and it’s not like they’ve got tutorials for everything in the repertoire—even things that are just a little off the beaten track. You will find tutorials for things that are very, very well known, and of course there is stuff there for years and years of learning. But for instance, I’ve recently worked on pieces by Samuel Barber and Gabriel Fauré — not super-de-duper common, but still well within the standard repertoire, and there are no tutorials on any piece by either composer.

The content they have is of very high quality, and it’s expanding regularly, but I don’t think it’s comprehensive.