Promotion question for well-rounded musician
In email I am receiving a promotion from tonebase to become a "well-rounded musician" I am already a lifetime member. Is there any difference between what I already have and this advertised new platform soon to launch? If so, what? Is this new platform already covered with a current lifetime membership? Thank you, Stephen Holland
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There was a couple of live stream on the subject
https://app.tonebase.co/guitar/live/player/tonebase-talks-3-tonebase-music-platform
and
https://app.tonebase.co/guitar/live/player/complete-musician-feb-2025
Hope this will answer your questions
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I have been a guitar tonebase member for years and enjoyed learning through tonebase. In the past few years, as new platforms have been added, I feel both the quantity and quality of the guitar material has declined. There is so little new content that I feel it has become hard to justify continued annual membership fees.
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Martha Kreipke Apologies! We've temporarily adjusted the quantity to focus on quality. We're always trying to have the best of both worlds and will be taking a good look at the upcoming courses and schedule. You're feedback is helpful in the planning process.
I hope you've gotten a chance to check out last week's Catalan Folk Songs course, it's fantastic. -
Martha Kreipke I largely agree with you, Martha, although as a lifetime member (which I don't regret having become) renewal isn't an issue for me. But there is no doubt the amount of guitar-focused material has sharply declined in recent times. This is particularly true of the live events. I was particularly disappointed by the unexplained departure (some years ago now) of Emmanuel Sowicz, whose presentations were among the highlights of the platform. And Mircea's promotion to a behind-the-scenes role, while no doubt good for him professionally, was another loss for the live content. While Martin has been doing his best to hold the fortress, he is just one individual, and we see that in his absence, ToneBase has rather little to offer on the 'live' front. (Of course, there is still the pre-recorded material, but that, for me at least, has never been the main draw here.)
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Trevor Bumgarner Personally, I'm not very much concerned with 'quality' if by that you mean the technical aspects of a production (lighting, sound, etc.). It's the content that matters. I would love to see a return of the live interviews (which, I would think, are rather easy to produce).
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Martha Kreipke I don't want to pile on Trevor (I guess that Trevor is involved with the management of the Tonebase platform?), but as a new member, I should probably make my impressions known to Trevor. I also expressed some of this in another topic in the forum last week.
For Trevor's sake ... I have a background in music on a totally different instrument, and I took up classical guitar 2 years ago as a hobby for my retirement years. I took advantage of the 40% off deal last November, where I got one year of Tonebase for $179. What I have experienced is this:
The lessons and master classes seem to be excellent. Well-known guitarists are giving lessons to little old me! Really interesting repertoire being covered.
But if you look at the dates of the lessons, they all seem to have been created during the pandemic. Kudos to Tonebase for throwing a financial lifeline to these great guitarists during a time when their income must have been curtailed.
But since mid-2022, not much new content has been created. Some of the lessons that I looked forward to (ie: Morel's Danza Brasilera) have vanished from the platform under the guise of "it doesn't meet our quality standards anymore". That's an interesting comment because, at one time, it did meet your standards.
At this point, my feeling is that unless there is new content created, I will find it difficult to justify paying the full price for the Tonebase platform when my trial period expires next November. -
Martha Kreipke Amen.
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Trevor Bumgarner I have tried to view this course.
The video and the audio are out of sync and it is very confusing. It gets worse when the score segment is demonstrated - at that time we can see his mouth moving but cannot hear it.
I would like to be able to go throught this course. I hope you can fix it. -
Martha Kreipke Hi Martha, I just happened to stumble on this. Are you talking about Łukasz Kuropaczewski's course? I've been working on 1, 2, and 6, and everything seems to be perfect. After hearing what you said, I spot-checked the others, and they seem fine.
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Martha Kreipke Hello Martha! Could you let me know what video you're referring to? I'll get to the bottom of it asap.
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Trevor Bumgarner
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Trevor Bumgarner I was viewing the Lukas’s course that was recently promoted via email. I started the course from the email link.
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@Martha Kreipke Trevor Bumgarner I had a similar problem watching this video. I was watching the first one on Plany. I don't know if it occurs in the other ones.
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Eric Phillips Martha Kreipke
Interesting, I'll investigate! I just watched through and didn't see any syncing issues. I was watching from Google Chrome on a laptop. Did either of you watch from a different browser or on mobile?
https://app.tonebase.co/guitar/courses/player/lukasz-kuropaczewski-llobet-catalan-folk-songs?moduleSlug=lukasz-kuropaczewski-llobet-catalan-folk-songs-01-plany -
Martha Kreipke
I Martha, I noticed also that sometimes the video and audio are out of sync. In these cases, I just reload the browser page and the video return to the same lecture position and everything is back in sync.
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Trevor Bumgarner I use a Lenovo laptop with Windows 11 and Chrome. I restarted the computer and the issue seems to be resolved. Thank you.
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Trevor Bumgarner I too watched from my laptop with Google Chrome. I have not watched again, to see if the issue repeated. The problem only occurred for part of the video. If it happens again, I'll try doing what Andre Bernier suggested. Thank you for taking the time to look into it, Trevor.
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Great question Stephen Holland!
tonebase Music is an entirely new platform – similar to if you joined another tonebase instrument (Violin, Trumpet, etc.). It will have it's own courses, artists, livestreams, coachings, etc and thus has it's own subscription so it can continue to grow and thrive.
Because it's unique in that it's the first broadly applicable, non-instrument specific platform, featuring some of the best knowledge across tonebase as well as brand new courses - we're offering the big discount to current tonebase members. -
I think what is bothering me the most is the new platform on "musicianship". That should be part of every platform. I feel it is a shortcoming of any music education system where musicianship, music theory, and music history is considered a totally separate path for learning. Otherwise all we are learning is how to play a series of notes.
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Martha Kreipke If 'all' I could do was play the series of notes that constitutes, say Giuliani's 'Grand Overture' or Rodrigo's 'Invocation and Dance', I wouldn't complain! But I do get your point. So too, I think does ToneBase, which is why they are offering this new platform. It would be nice (and perhaps sensible) if access to it were included in a subscription to the individual platforms for instruments. But there is no doubt a significant cost involved in preparing all the new materials, and that cost has to be borne by someone. The price of a lifetime membership (particularly with the discount) does not strike me as excessive, so I'll likely sign up. Hopefully, the content warrants that decision.
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Well I for one will stand up quickly and say I wouldn't buy the lifetime membership now, having been a member for so long.
1. Everything is about dead music by composers long since decomposed.
2. Because it's all dead music you can find the same content everywhere - and often for free.
3. Many of the live events come off as unprepared (basically anything that has that fellow asking the softball questions).
4. It feels entrepreneurial i.e. very little thought is going into making tonebase valuable, but lots of thought seems to go into getting more cash out of tonebase.
5. I really started to hate this place when my lifetime membership to tonebase was lessened to "tonebase - boring dead guy classical guitar only". Yes I play piano, violin, and flute. I was hoping they might make up for the yawner that the guitar side became and was looking forward to maybe something new to me. Yeah we know how that went. And of course I didn't fork out more money to go on the same ride.
But wait here's Joaquin Clerch on Tonebase. Is he going to talk about his beautiful Preludios de Primavera? Or even better a new work being made available first on tonebase due to a commission? Nah how about we dissect the simple etudes again for the billionth time.
Nope this site never lived up to it's hype, far less it's potential. I certainly wouldn't recommend the place to a friend. But my friends don't need a 1,000,000th discussion of the Chaconne.
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JR There must be something wrong with me. I actually like that music by 'boring dead guys'. (And a few dead gals too.) Yes sir, from Bach to Bowie, I like it all!
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David Krupka I have to agree with you. Bach being my favourite. There is something to be said for the quality and beauty of the music written by those dead composers'. Actually describing these very talented composers as just "boring dead guy" is very disrespectful given the beauty of the music that they have gifted to us. I listen to modern classical music written by more modern composers and I struggle to see how their music could be classified as classical. It sounds more like jazz or rock. I just wonder if JR considers the music written for violin, flute and piano, music written by "boring dead guys"
Music of many different styles by many different composers brings much joy to many of us. So appreciate and enjoy.
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