Welcome to the tonebase Piano Community!

Hi Everyone

This is Tim from Portland, Oregon. I took a leap of faith and bought a nice piano... I played for many years, but was never very dedicated. So I have lots of gaps in my knowledge. Tonebase is really helping to fill those gaps.

I'm enjoying the challenges (working the through the 10 scales challenge now) it is fun to play small parts of pieces I love and I really enjoy the challenge.

Today I will start the Chaconne practice challenge. Hope to see some of you giving it a shot it will be rewarding working together on a 'team' project.

Hello fellow pianists.  I live in San Francisco (almost 20 years now) although grew up in the Seattle area and took lessons for 8 years (age 10-18).  I was obsessed with the piano during that time and carried what I learned into college playing for choirs and other events to earn money.  I am married with 2 kids (a son at UCLA and a daughter in high school who also plays piano).

Decades passed (and many years without a piano at all) but in the last 4 years I’ve been playing regularly across the classical repertoire and realized I have many bad habits and had never focused on foundational technique.  I’m good at sight reading, but would describe my playing as sloppy and practice as unfocused.

Tonebase is perfect for me because I was looking for more advanced instruction from a variety of sources.  I highly recommend Penelope Roskell’s book The Complete Pianist, which I’m using to try to break my bad habits.  She has a lot of videos featured on tonebase based on some of the book's content.  Dominic’s excellent live streams are finally what convinced me to join.   I’m also learning classical guitar (but only a year so far) and may consider the guitar side of tonebase in the future.

I had been working on a number of the Goldberg variations, Albeniz's Iberia book 1 (amazing pieces), some of the Chopin nocturnes as well as Ballade #1 (see the excellent tonebase video by Garrick Ohlsson), but now that I’ve joined I’m going to focus on the pieces available in lessons/live streams from tonebase.

Finally, like most of you I'm also looking for a community of fellow pianists (at all levels) to learn from and share a love of this amazing instrument.

Hello to all , I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading about everyone’s relationship to the piano 
 I was born and raised in Somerset ,England but moved to Little Rock ,Arkansas for work when I was 23 yrs old ( I’m a retired Registered Nurse ) and have lived in Little Rock for the past 42 yrs . 

Classical music has been my great love for as long as I can remember and I started  playing the piano at 8 because we had one at home . Of course like many I didn’t stick with it through the teen years and college etc but I drifted back to the piano over the last 15 yrs finding an amateur musician group and a piano teacher group that meets monthly . These monthly meetings have really helped to keep me practising and although I’m not taking lessons presently I get valuable critiques from friends when I play ! This past year we’ve been recording on You Tube and then our chair sends out a newsletter with our submissions  .I love hearing my friends play even though none of us can seem to submit a perfect piece !! 

My favorite food is ice cream but really I love everything except licorice. 
I've been a member of Tonebase since Sept 2020 and plan to renew my membership again as I’ve learned so many useful things . I recently finished the Mozart K545 and submitted it to my group. Despite Sara Buechner’s excellent teaching it was a lot harder to learn than I remembered at 10 yrs old !

I am presently working on

R Schumann Romance , op. 28. 2

 The e minor trio sonata by J.S. Bach/ Stradal

Midday Thoughts by Aaron Copland       
Chaconne in G major by Handel. 
Just have to say thank you to Ben and Dominic , I’m learning so much , 

Sincerely Marianne Hampton

Hi Everyone,

My name is Cynthia Medd Sanger and I am from Moline, IL. I would say my favorite food from Moline is Happy Joe’s Taco Pizza. It is the perfect combination of crunch and smooth. 
 

I am currently working on various Chopin Nocturnes, Goldberg Variations, and Schumann Concerto.  I also just started the Handel Community Challenge.
 

I have playing classical piano for 40 years and hope to connect with other individuals across the globe who share my intellectual curiosity about the instrument and its diverse repertoire. We are so fortunate to play such a magnificent instrument. 

Hi everyone,

My name is Sandy Asirvatham, although lately I have readopted my original Indian name, Sandhya (SAHNdia), as my professional artist identity. I'm a singer, songwriter, pianist, and composer/arranger/producer--as well as writer, video producer, QuickBooks expert, and newly hired bartender. I'm mostly a professional restless person.

I've been a Tonebase member for more than a year, I think, starting somewhere early in the pandemic shutdown. I'm a New Yorker at heart but have lived over 20 years in Baltimore MD, an artistically very fertile town despite its small population and significant economic and social issues. It's both cliche and true that my favorite local food is crab cake prepared with Old Bay seasoning, washed down with a classic Black-Eyed Susan (though I like mine heavy on the bourbon and light on the Peach Schnapps). 

I had a fair amount of formal piano training as a teen but was a multidiscipline artists from the start. After a first career in fiction writing, essays, and journalism, I became (by dint of will and obsessive practice) a working jazz pianist/singer in my mid-30s. Later I evolved (devolved, maybe?) into more of an art rock or alternative rock artist. My third cd, INNOCENT MONSTER, is out now and starting to get some really nice press notice and spins on indie freeform radio. 

I've had intermittent access to a few really fine conservatory-level piano teachers, so I do have some technical ability. But I'm a composer/improviser in my bones. Musicality and interpretive individuality come much easier than skillz. I'm here to learn from "the other side" and sharpen my technical ability, among other aspects of musicianship. 

I'm currently working on Schubert Improvisation in Gb Major (Op 90 #3). By "currently" I mean that I first learned it 20 years ago, have forgotten and relearned it about 6 times, and only now in the past few months have gotten it memorized, more or less. There are some other pieces in my close-at-hand repertoire that I plan to polish and memorize over the next few years, as time allows.

I perform in front of audiences from 10 to 1000 all the time--I've even played in free improvisation shows with musicians I've never met before, and we all made it sound composed/rehearsed. I'm almost never nervous about such gigs! but the idea of recording and submitting a formal piece for a Tonebase master class frightens the stuffing out of me. That said, I live to face down personal challenges, so you'll see my rough but heartfelt attempts soon enough.

I love Tonebase's resources and the generosity of its teachers and members. Thanks for building this community.
 

Hi Dominic, thanks for your post.

I am Alexandros Papakostas.

I was born and raised in Athens - Greece.

If I had to decide one food, that would be a day catch grilled fish with olive oil and lemon.

I am fifty years old. I used to study piano and I started it again last year.

currently, I work on Mozart piano sonata in F major and on Bach 3nd French suite.

I found tonebase by accident and I am really impressed.

I will follow this forum in order to meet new musicians and discuss with them.

My name is Kevin McGill. I live in Bowling Green, Ohio. My favorite food from here is probably pizza; for a small town we have a crazy number of pizza restaurants.

I received a Master's Degree in Piano Performance and Pedagogy 22 years ago. I am a full-time church musician, so most of my time is spent playing the organ and directing choirs. I have so enjoyed Tonebase because it has given me the opportunity to think about piano-related topics again. I have periods of time where I practice classical piano music regularly with the hope of giving a recital, then my world of church music takes all my attention and practicing piano stops. It's been a crazy cycle of that over the past 22 years. My last classical piano recital was 17 years ago. I miss it. Last year I started working on Mendelssohn's Rondo Cappricioso and Mozart Sonata 284, but practicing has been sporadic.

Hi there,

* Jens from Belgium. Obviously i like our french fries (trust, they're Belgian, not French) - play mainly jazz and improvised music, but love studying classical piano. studied in conservatories in Ghent & Brussels, have extensive past as a keyboard player in pop bands, but then started a career as a solo artist (producer/DJ) in electronic music. Kept piano locked from the outside world, ... as my musical ever uncompromised safe haven .. smth like that i guess. As a result I haven't been practicing all that disciplined over the last few years and I want to pick that back up again and work on technique and practice routines.
 

* working on Grieg's sonata in Em, rachmaninov's op 38 nr 8 in d minor, chopin op 10 nr 1 ... and excerpts from different pieces (of which other parts are simply above my paygrade) 

* see above: technique & practice routines 

anyhow, don't know how active this forum/community is, but ehm yeh ... fantastic website, great initiative ... my best piano teachers at times have been random ppl on youtube explaining something very specific about a piece or a way of studying etc... i hope to find more of that here.

X
 

Hi, everyone!
I'm Jorge from Colombia; I've lived in Barcelona (Spain) for 13 years now. I define myself as a father-musician-anesthesiologist; my main instrument is the electric bass, but I also play the guitar, drums and now I'm starting with the piano. My goal is to improve my musicianship by learning the different voicing and inversions on the piano.

From Colombia, I love coconut rice, patacones, avocado salad and fried fish.  From Spain, I like a bacalao salad called "esqueixada de bacalao".

Since I'm starting with the piano, I'm working on "The pillars of piano technique." and "Technique training" by Penelope Roskell. 

Hope to see you around!

Jorge.