Welcome to the tonebase Piano Community!

Hi all.

My name is Mike and I am from Germany. Favorite food is a hard question.

I did not play seriously the last 10 years. I am taking lessons for 7 months now. Just working on Andantino right know. In my spare time I like to learn anime and film music.

The concept of tonebase is very insteresting. I am always looking for advise on getting better.

From the USA I am originally from Long Island NY about 20 Miles east of New York City. Currently live in Elk Grove California outside of Sacramento.

Favorite food: NY Style Pizza, and true boiled bagels. Besides those two California pretty much offers anything you can desire by way of food

What I am working on. To be honest I am a bit out of my league here. I am new to the piano. I played guitar and electric bass in my earlier years. Now in my 60's I thought I'd give Piano a try. But after some frustration with online courses I kind of gave up, until my brother Stephen mentioned Tonebase. He is an excellent guitarist  in his own right and thought I would apprectiate Tonebase. So I am working on Beginning piano techniques, improving sight reading, and building a repetoire. Looking at the lessons and couses they look interesting and challenging.

What to get from the community: Hopefully encouragement and some advice now and then. As I said I am a bginner so i hope to glean information here with the goal of improving my skills and one day being able to help someone like me.

Thank you 

JV

Hallo! I am Kerstin. I am originally from East Germany, but after the wall has fallen I went to Munich and here I am. I was studying piano in Leipzig end of 80s, did not finish it.

Than I didn‘t play much the next 30 years. But last year I followed the life stream of Chopin competition and have fallen in love with the piano and Chopin again. I have found a teacher for one lesson a week and play about 2 hours a day. Right now I am working on Chopin Scherzo 1 and started 2, Chopin Etudes op.10/1 and 4. 2 weeks ago I finished with Chopin Etudes op. 10/5 and 12. Finished for me means I have it in my mind and can play it without to many mistakes. Than I record it with my handy and send it to my friends. So I want to improve my technic - need to play faster and lighter. And…

I like pizza in all variations.

Maybe some people here (playing the same piece) find together, motivate each other. 
Thanks for being here.

Hello tonebase, 

My name is Blake Marble. I live in Battle Ground, Washington. Which is a small town north of Portland, OR. We have fantastic food and coffee, so it is pretty hard to choose but I'd say anything breakfast related is my favorite. 

Currently, I am taking a break from formal lessons and am trying to figure out what repertoire to learn. I'm hoping that being a part of this community will provide some accountability and guidance on what to learn. So if anyone has suggestions please go right ahead. The last pieces I learned were Jeux d'eau and the first piece of Debussy's children's corner. 

I am excited to get involved with this community!

I live near Green Bay, Wisconsin. My state is known for its beer. I love New Glarus Spotted Cow, which is only sold in Wisconsin (though people try to smuggle it out and sell it in other states).

I'm 42 and started piano lessons maybe six years ago. During this past spring/winter semester I worked on a few Debussy preludes and La Plus Que Lente. I'm on a little break this summer from lessons, mostly focusing on keyboard harmony and sight reading because I'm interested in composition. Right now I'm focusing on the "Rule of the Octave" and figuration preludes, and hope to slooooowly work through John Mortensen's book on historical improv for the piano.

I have a wonderful teacher who is originally from Tblisi, Georgia and trained in the Soviet Union, but ended up emigrating to the US and landed in my town. She's very encouraging and supportive, and also has exceptionally high standards and isn't afraid of giving feedback :-) One of the things I've liked about Tonebase so far have been the masterclasses because they end up reinforcing things my teacher tells me over and over--the importance of counting (Ben Laude with Leon Fleischer), tone production (Kohlodenko on his teacher Vera Gornostaeva), and touch (Arie Vardi on Debussy). 

I decided to post in this forum today, after being on Tonebase for the last six months, because I think it would be nice to be part of a group of people who are as interested in the piano as I am. I've also spent the last year working very hard at addressing really significant performance anxiety that caught me by surprise when I started lessons. The only way to overcome any type of anxiety is through exposure, so I'm hoping to eventually post some videos or take part in a community challenge. Thanks so much!

Leah

Hi everyone ! So nice to read your descriptions and programmes !

 I was born in Belgium, from an argentinian father and a dutch mother, and I've been living in Paris now for 10 years. My favourite food ? Awww, not easy to answer !! From Argentina, of course, the meat is absolutely terrific ! The french fries with American tartare in Belgium are awesome too, and in France, well, maybe my favourite would be good food from the mountains with melted cheese and some truffles !!

 I'm a pianist and private teacher, currently working on Scriabin's Etude op.42 n°5, op.8 n°11 and 12, Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu (I've never touched this one before !), Liszt/Schubert Gretchen am Spinnrade (anyone who could tell me some ways to clean the last part ? I do it quite OK on my own, but terribly while performing !) , some WF Bach's Polonaises, Moszkowski's transcription of Isolde's Death (wonderful !), Beethoven op. 109 and 110... 

I'm also a composer, and try to grow more minimalistic in my work (my first pieces were very lyrical !)

Why enter Tonebase ? (I'm sorry, that's going to be quite long !!)

I got some technical issues when I was a teenager, it was impossible to me to progress. My teacher was absolutely wonderful to increase my musicality and sensitivity, but never teached me HOW to practice, nor how to move. "Work harder, move your wrists and put some cold water if it starts hurting" were the unique advices in front of my issues.

Today, I am 31 years old, and I've spent my pianistic life devastated, thinking I had a problem, that I would physically never be able to overcome those difficulties, and that difficult pieces were just not for me. I worked hard without other result than injuries, and started composing, instead of interpreting, in 2017.

Performing my own compositions helped me a lot to understand my body, and to leave the anxiety of playing in public. When you play your own work, you don't have the fear to ruin a masterpiece, or to disrespect a composer you adore ! You just enjoy playing and sharing your work with others. 

I also started teaching, and understanding more and more how the body worked, while asking myself how I could help best my pupils, watching great pianists move, analysing there way to play. (Oh, and I discovered that I had two elbows, and that they could actually move !!!)

In 25 years of piano, I had NEVER heard about tricks to practice, nor from my teachers, nor from the other students. I started trying to figure out some exercices to build up the technique, and got able to play pieces I could never learn before (for example, Scriabin op.8 n°12, I couldn't even play one line without hurting myself !)

Smoothly, my self-confidence went from 0 to 5, and I started longing to perform classical music again in front of an audience. I do, now, perform programs where i mix and match classical pieces and my own compositions ! 

But I still need to progress, I have still many difficulties to play "clean", without all those terrible wrong notes everywhere ! 

Tonebase is absolutely incredible for that ! I signed up last week and it's a whole world appearing, as if I had never learned music ! Dominic Cheli 's workshop are so helpful (oh and I watched your Brahms op. 118 n°2, it is an absolutely subtle and wonderful interpretation!) as Asiya's courses, for what i've watched until now. I can't wait to keep on watching and learning.

THANK YOU Tonebase, and welcome to new subscribers !

• Where are you from and what's your favorite food from there?
  I'm from Buenos Aires, the capital city of Argentina. Love the big metropolis cause is easier to get all kinds of foods from everywhere. I enjoy pastas and the ocasional asado 
• What are you currently working on? 
  Nothing. Nothing at all. Yet
• What are you hoping to get out of this community? 
  I studied piano ten years as a child/teenager. Attempted twice completing studies on music production and then got in the trade of software development. I hope to recover some of the skill I had back in the day in broader plan of getting back to art in general. That's the minimum. For the looks of the platform it seems I will get much more
  
  Saludos 

Hello, my name is Dan and I was born in Seattle, WA and now live in Kent, WA. My favorite food being from Seattle is Sea Food (crab and salmon).  I just joined today as I heard about this from Musical-U and piano is fairly all new to me.  I am doing a little on-line with a Josh Wright Course and he suggested Piano Marvel for sight reading.  I hope to be inspired to dive in and learn as this is new to me.

Thank you,

• Where are you from and what's your favorite food from there?
  Bristol UK. Nowadays I eat a wholly vegan diet which doesn't of course have much local heritage, but the West Country is famous for its apples (which I love) and cider (for US readers, this is the grown-up dry alcoholic version, not the kids' apple juice), which I don't (give me red wine any day!)
• What are you currently working on? 
  Currently obsessing over Berg's Piano Sonata Op.1 – surely the most amazing Op.1 from any composer?!  Sad to see that Tonebase doesn't have anything on this piece (or anything by Berg). In theory I'm also working on a Bach Prelude & Fugue (the E flat major from WTC Book 1)  and a Debussy étude (Pour les sonorités opposés) but the technical and interpretative challenges of the Berg have rather crowded out my other repertoire.
• What are you hoping to get out of this community?
  Ideally, the impetus/motivation to get value out of Tonebase. I trialled Tonebase once before but found it hard to find reasons to keep using it. I'm a slow learner, so the three pieces mentioned above will be more than enough to keep me busy for most of the rest of the year, so while it's good that there's lots of Tonebase repertoire (and growing) I don't have an obvious way to use it directly in my current studies. Also, I struggle a bit with justifying time spent watching videos on things I'm not learning when the same time (out of my limited time budget, like everyone) could in theory have been spent at the keyboard or in studying the pieces I'm working on away from the keyboard. An hour spent on Tonebase is an hour not practising!  I'd be really interested to hear other members' perspectives on these issues

Cheers