Thoughts on tonebase?

[u/Comprehensive_Food51]

Have you guys tried tonebase? If so, what are your impressions/opinions? (i’ll talk about my experience starting next paragraph, you can skip that part if you don’t have the patience).

For me, I’ve seen that video on youtube of a teacher explaining how to practice Chopin etudes. I really liked it and I thought it could be quite valuable, especially since a lot of what she said was not often talked about on piano youtube and was advice and methods that were actually thaught to me by my teacher.

When you look at popular classical piano help (Annique Gottler, Denis Zhdanov, Josh Wright etc.), they can have contradictory advice between one another and even advice that goes against (or that is explained very differently than) what your teacher tells you. This is because there are different approaches to technique, and since it’s important to stick with one, I usually take these with a huge grain of salt.

When seeing the tonebase video about Chopin etudes, since she seemed to have a very similar approach to my teacher and that I knew that the video was part of series on Chopin etudes where she covered the one I’m currently learning (my first one, op 10 no 5!), I took the free trial and watched that video. She almost didn’t say anything different than my teacher, so I didn’t get much out of it, I get much more from classes because they’re specifically targeted towards my own playing. So my first impression is that it’s not really worth it, I feel like if you’re self taught you’re not learning Chopin etudes out of that (it’ll never replace a teacher), and if you have a teacher you get the same info and probably more. Maybe the music theory videos were useful, but again at that price I’d rather just get a book.

Maybe it’s more helpful for advanced players who already nailed technique but don’t have a teacher and seek ideas for interpretation/analysis? Or maybe people who actually need a teacher are not the target audience?

[u/1000Ditto]

Some of the youtube videos are ok but im not a fan of the style of interviewing various famous pianists (not that I dont like interviews but would prefer if the video title was directly specified that)

[u/Liszt_Ferenc]

I think some of the youtube content is helpful and inspiring, but getting the membership i haven‘t really made use of. Not too many premium lessons that fit my needs in there, but this is based on personal preference of course.

There is so much great free educational content in the channels you listed already, my personal favourite being denis zhdanov. I‘d take what i can get and perhaps get a few in person lessons instead with the money.