Welcome to the tonebase Piano Community!

Hello, 

My name is James Guglielmo, and I have been playing the piano for 72 years.  I fell in love with music when I was nine years old.  The piano, for me, is a means to an end.  I can play the piano forever because the Music puts me in a heavenly domain.  I been playing the two-part inventions, but I play them in different keys using the same fingering.  I can understand Bach better sometimes when I see it in a different key.  

Here is a question for you:  I have been practicing the Brahms fifty-one exercises.  But there is one in particular that seems impossible for me.  It's number 19.   This one is a killer, especially for the thumb.  Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.  I think this platform is amazing!

Hello!  I'm Raj,  born in India but grew up in West Virginia.   It was a nice place to grow up but the local cuisine was not memorable, unfortunately, though their renditions of standard Americana fare was certainly worthy of note.  

I'm currently working on Chopin Etudes Op 25 no 1, no 11 and no 12,  Chopin Nocturnes Op 27 nos 1 and 2, and recently completed Op 48 no 1.  Also working on Chopin Ballade in Gm no 1, which is what sold me on starting here.

I'm a first generation musician and piano player and my musical and piano development really only started in my late teens and early twenties after leaving home for college and grad school, and I'm trying to make up for a weak foundation.  Even though I can 'play' some nice repertoire, I've done so without mastering fundamentals and this severely limits my potential.  I hope that tonebase reference materials and interactions with other developing pianists win this forum can help on this piano journey.

Hello, Tonebase Community.

My name is Norm and I live in Oviedo, Florida, right outside of Orlando/Winter Park.  I moved here in July of 2023 after a long career as a high school music teacher/choral director in Hamburg, NY a suburb of Buffalo. I am currently retired from teaching music and now work as a Dean in a middle school…so I am hardly retired. I joined Tonebase to connect with a music community since I have been out of the music loop for a couple years.

I received my undergraduate degree in Piano Performance from the SUNY Buffalo and my graduate degree in piano and music education from SUNY Fredonia. I also pursued a graduate degree in piano performance (but never finished) at the Manhattan School of Music, and spent my freshman year of undergrad at MSM. I also studied for several years as a teenager with Ana Maria Bottazzi, who was very influential.

As a piano performance major, I studied and performed many advanced piano works, including; Bach: C minor Partita, Beethoven: Sonatas Op.57,Op.78 and Op. 109, Brahms: Concerto No.1, Rachmaninov: Paganini Rhapsody, Schumann: Carnival, among others.

While I studied the above and other challenging piano works, I never felt totally comfortable enough with my technique to become a confident solo pianist…thus my decision to change my focus on conducting, teaching and accompanying. Looking back, I realize that these works, although impressive, were way beyond my technical ability at that time and I would have been better served working on shorter, less challenging pieces, developing a larger, more diverse repertoire.

I hope to use the Tonebase platform to refine my technique and increase my repertoire by learning the many works I should have learned in my developmental years of study!

My name is Alex, 

I'm from Australia. I'm a professional IT consultant and play the piano as a hobby. I took it up again mostly to teach my son and now I find I play for myself and more than I ever did in my youth,

I'm currently working on most of the 18 Mozart piano sonatas. Aside from a handful of the earlier ones that I haven't started on yet. I'm particularly focused on No 5 in G major, K. 283, No. 7 in C major, K. 309, No. 8 in A minor, K. 310, No. 9 in D major, K. 311, and pretty much all of them in book 2 (Nos 10-18).

I enjoyed your video on how to play the Rondo A la Turka. I played this piece too much as a child and haven't yet returned to it too much although I plan to do that soon!

I'm also working on the 6 Haydn sonatas dedicated to Katherina & Marianna Auenbrugger especially C major Hob:XVI 35, E flat major Hob:XVI 38 and G major Hob:XVI 39.

Also a few of the Clementi sonatas esp. B-Flat Major, Op.24 No.2.

What I hope to gain from the community is any tips since I don't have a teacher nor time to find one.