tonebase

What tonebase is

tonebase is an online platform for learning classical music, sold as a membership and built for players of an instrument rather than for people making courses. Its home page is titled "Online Classical Music Lessons & Courses", and the About page's description calls it "the top online music conservatory, featuring lessons and workshops from the biggest names in classical music." The company, tonebase, Inc., gives 2017 as its founding date and names three co-founders: Igor Lichtmann, who handles content strategy and artist relations, Chris Garwood, its CMO, and Abhi Nayar, a former CTO who now sits on the board. The About page says the company is based in Los Angeles and describes it as a "fast-paced, high-growth seed-stage startup" that works with contractors, videographers, artists, designers and developers around the world.

The reasoning behind it is set out plainly on the About page. For too long, it says, "the knowledge of the world's greatest musicians has been accessible to only a select few", meaning those with the talent and the money to attend elite universities and conservatories. The stated mission is "to democratize access to the highest-quality music education", and the company says it wants to build "the go-to resource for anyone learning an instrument anywhere."

Instruments and courses

Each instrument has its own section of the site. They are grouped as guitar, piano and voice, a general music section, strings (violin, viola, cello and double bass), winds (flute, clarinet and saxophone) and brass (horn, trumpet, trombone, euphonium and tuba). The home page promises "100s of courses from award-winning instructors" and invites members to "Play as you watch 1,000s of lessons on repertoire, music theory, and technique." The line that closes every page widens that to "thousands of lessons, courses, and interviews taught by 100s of world-class instructors including GRAMMY award-winners and teachers from top music schools." The home page's own description counts 1,000+ guitar, piano, violin, cello and flute lessons, taught by award-winning players and teachers from top conservatories.

Guitar is the catalog the site describes in most detail. Its course page, "Browse Online Classical Guitar Courses", offers "Instant access to 100s of courses" taught by "GRAMMY winners, Juilliard professors, and world-renowned performers, covering everything from timeless repertoire to advanced technique." Courses there are sorted into Popular, Technique, Repertoire, Fundamentals and Etudes, so a player can go looking for a specific piece, a technical problem or the basics.

The featured list on that page shows what a course looks like in practice: a well-known performer working through one piece or one skill. It includes Pepe Romero on making melodies sing, Ana Vidovic on Albeniz's Asturias (Leyenda), Scott Tennant on Spanish Romance, Andrew York's Sunburst, Jan Depreter on a Weiss Passacaille, Leo Brouwer teaching his own Estudios Sencillos, and Badi Assad on creating extended guitar techniques. Lesson samples in the same list include Paul O'Dette on Bach's BWV 995, Eliot Fisk on the Loure from BWV 1006, Stephanie Jones on melody technique, and warm-up lessons from Tengyue Zhang and Thomas Viloteau. The guitar page sums up the offer as learning "new repertoire and techniques from award-winning artists and renowned instructors."

Live workshops and the community

Recorded lessons are not the whole offer. The home page invites members to "Meet iconic artists in LIVE workshops", to learn how world-class artists approach the music in real time, and to "Participate in virtual masterclasses and get feedback from the artists themselves." The guitar page makes the same offer to guitarists and adds that members can put their own questions to the artists while the session is running. Events have their own section of the site.

The community is the third piece. Members are invited to "Engage with fellow learners from around the world", to take part in community events and to "get personalized feedback on your playing." A member quoted on the home page, Eric P., who joined in April 2020, describes how that works: "We [in the community] all give each other wonderful, positive feedback. The teachers also give incredibly detailed ways that we can improve our playing."

The team page shows who runs this side of the product. Martin Zimny, a professionally trained classical guitarist and sound and video engineer, is Head of Coaching + Live/Community and also the Guitar Lead. Piano Lead Dominic Cheli lists performing and streaming to the tonebase community as his favorite activities. There are leads for voice and violin as well; Violin Lead Christian Kim spent 6 years as a professor for violin and viola in Seoul and toured as a soloist and chamber musician before joining.

Access, free lessons and how the videos are made

Access is on demand: the site says members can reach tonebase "24/7 from any device", in the practice room or on a bus.

Alongside the paid catalog, tonebase publishes free material by instrument: free lessons for classical guitar, piano, voice, violin, cello, flute and trumpet, and free sheet music for classical guitar, piano, voice, violin, cello and flute. Most instruments also have their own blog. The classical guitar blog covers nails, strings, technique, scales and how to practice; the piano blog covers practice, scales and digitizing sheet music; the cello blog explains how to tune a cello and ranks sonatas and composers; the violin blog covers scales and lists sonatas and composers; and the flute blog lists sonatas. The guitar section also lists a resource called tonebase Editions next to its blog. For a player deciding whether the teaching style suits them, the free lessons are the obvious place to start.

The team list says a good deal about how much production goes into the videos. Head of Production Sean Mulholland "oversees hundreds of hours of content creation every month", and post producers are assigned to individual instruments: piano, violin, flute, guitar, cello, trumpet and voice. The company also employs a senior editor for workbooks and enrichment material and a piano YouTube creator.

Membership, price and trial

tonebase is paid for as a membership. The guitar section names three tiers, Basic, Premium and Premium+. Promotions change through the year: the home and guitar pages have carried a "Fall Sale: Just $199 for Yearly" banner, and the home page also offers "Join Today & Get 14 Days Free!", with a Start Free Trial button on every page. The home and course pages do not set out what separates the three tiers or what each costs by the month, so a buyer compares them on the pricing page before the trial ends.

The site leans on its members for its sales case. The home page says "Over 25,000 active members" and "Our members rate us at 4.8/5 stars", and the guitar page invites players to "Join over 10,000 fellow musicians improving every day on tonebase." Omid S., who joined in September 2022, says: "Instead of scouring the internet for hours for performance tips and tricks, I now have access to a wealth of high-quality content from renowned artists at my fingertips!" Giao P., a member since March 2021, writes: "Sincerely speaking, a few months with tonebase help me solve many issues I have had with my fingers for years if not decades." On the guitar page, concert and chamber guitarist Dave McLellan says: "I don't regret for a minute having spent the money on the membership. There's something for every musician on tonebase".

Support runs through a Help Center and a contact page, and the company gives team@tonebase.co as its email for help, comments, suggestions and anything else. The site is in English.

Who it suits

tonebase suits players working in classical music who want to study repertoire and technique with recognized performers and conservatory teachers, on their own schedule, and who are happy to learn mostly from video. A classical guitarist gets the deepest material on the site, with named artists, course categories that run from Fundamentals to Etudes, and the fullest blog and free-lesson section. Pianists, singers and string, wind and brass players each have their own section, with free lessons and sheet music for several of those instruments, and the brass section reaches as far as euphonium and tuba.

The live workshops and the community make it a good fit for a player who wants more than recorded video: a chance to hear how an artist thinks about a piece, ask a question in a masterclass, and get feedback from peers and teachers. Because the courses are built around single pieces and specific skills, they also sit well beside lessons with a local teacher.

The caveat is the focus. The site frames itself as classical throughout, from its page titles to its course list, so a rock or pop guitarist looking for riffs and songs is not the reader it writes for. And because the tiers are named without their contents on the course pages, the free trial is the time to check which tier a player actually needs.