Unrequested feedback about Tonebase content
Hi all,
I recently subscribed to this platform and I'm overwhelmed by the amount of content, in form of videos, courses, "community challenge", "two weeks intensive", live events and much more.
I wish the content was somehow more structured so that I could feed "guided" in my journey, instead I feel that "everything is at reach, you only have to know what to search for".
I'd like to leave here some random suggestions for the staff, maybe the team can take some inspiration.
- can we have a shared web calendar with the live events?
- on the homepage, can we have an overview of *everything* that's going on ? for instance: The current "community challenge", the current "Two Week Intensives", the upcoming "live event" etc.
- would be nice to being able to mark a video as "watched" or "not watched".
- talking about the "live"section of the website, I find the content structure a bit confusing. "Live instructors" is separated from "Past live events" for no immediate clear reason. The website mentions that "live instructors" are "guest", but I'm a user of the platform, I don't know who's a guest and who's an employee..and that is not helping me on finding content right for me.
In the "live instructor" section I see courses and livestreams together. I'd expect to see first "livestream" and then maybe below in a section like "Did you like X? Watch also his courses".
- the "past live events" is divided in 4 sub-sections, I wish I knew the difference between a "live lesson" and a "webinar", but I don't and the website doesn't clarify it for me.
To conclude, I love this platform. for a reasonable price you get _tons_ of quality material, not like other platforms focused on "play these 4 cords". keep it up team!
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Hi Ignazio! First of all, thank you very much for your feedback! We highly value suggestions from our members as they give us the most critical perspective on our product: the customer’s perspective.
I agree with you, a lot is going on, especially within the tonebase community, and it would be helpful to offer some guided structure. Some of it may seem unorganized because we still experiment with several formats to see what provides the most value to our members. On that note, we are currently working on simplifying the offering while offering a great variety of community activities!
Some of your suggestions refer to the structure of the website itself; I will take your feedback and forward that to our developers and see what we can do about it!
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martin Hi, I am new to tonebase, and love it. However, my first disappointment was not getting into a two week intensive due to demand. That would be perfectly OK if the intensive presentation is archived so that any member can benefit. But a membership implies access to everything, not a "first come first serve" situation. This has to be handled differently...I don't think I'm the only one who is upset by this. Everything else is superlative and I'm delighted to have the opportunity to learn with artists I would ordinarily never have access to.
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Janice hi Janice - I’m not sure if this will help, but all the intensives thus far have a “public space” which you can access. If you go to the two week intensives and click on general information, that page has all of the past intensive public pages in which anyone can access the general teaching. I think a big part of the intensive experience is the group dynamic, and my thought is that the privacy afforded by the private groups allows people who might be reticent to try something publicly a feeling of security. To make the private group public at a later date could cause some to be less willing to join in. It is a challenge to sign up (I haven’t made it in yet, either), but to make the experience worthwhile there has to be a limit!
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Maybe the first intensive should be about how to feel comfortable trying new things in front of large groups of people! All kidding aside, this reminded me of a midnight holiday sale at a Walmart. I just think there should be an alternative way of handling it, as I may not check my emails until later in the day, and never get in. There is so much value on this site it isn't a big deal, one way or another. I still think Tonebase is the best I've seen and feel lucky to be a member.
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Janice Hi Janice! Thank you for your feedback. We have seen an overwhelming interest in this new format and are still trying to figure out the best way to offer value to all of you!
We need to manage class sizes as our instructors can only guide a certain amount of people. For everybody who couldn’t make it into the course, we offer the Public Space, where you can still follow the instructor’s assignment videos and participate via video submissions. We will open a public space for Ben’s course as soon as the activity starts!
We will try a different way of handling the sign-up process for the next Two Week Intensive. However, given this event’s interactive and personal nature, we cannot guarantee a spot for every tonebase member (at the moment).
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martin Thanks! I don’t mind not participating live, as long as I can view the presentation. I understand a small group makes people feel at ease sharing. Perhaps one of the groups could be composed of 10 participants who feel comfortable with other people not in the group looking in, sort of like the surgical theaters you see on medical TV serials. Thanks for public space…I did not know about it.
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I feel the same. As relative beginner a more structured roadmap would be welcome. Or at least a section advising where to start the journey rather than cherry picking what I think may be suitable.
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I have just seen this thread and it poses a number of issues regarding the two week intensives. However, thank you for providing the public space. Much appreciated.
I suspect that there are too many people on the TB platform to be able to allocate even one session across the year to each individual student. This results in the 'competition', which one writer has described as a Walmart sale. It's disappointing to read that Thurmond hadn't been able to be invited to any of the sessions.
I have not bothered to even try to enter as each time I looked at the various sessions they were already over-subscribed.
There is a connected thread about structured learning and that leads me to think that people could grade themselves on a scale of 1 - 10 and the sessions could be arranged around that grading. Sample pieces could be given for each grade and then the technical classes would slot into naturally to the chosen level.
This might give more flexibility in numbers. A seminar approach that was used in my University was to have around 15 people in a 2-hour seminar and 3 people would present each week [around 45 minutes each]. This could be scaled down for these musical presentations to say 3 minutes each for 6 people - 18 minutes of playing - accompanied by teaching.
This seminar approach provides the private space for people to develop their confidence in presenting to others.
