The Global Leaders Institute announces a new partnership with tonebase, a digital platform that allows music enthusiasts to learn from the convenience of home through pre-recorded and live instruction by world-class musicians. Music learners worldwide connect with classical music stars and other educators by accessing cinema-quality video tutorials, live events, and learning groups in tonebase’s growing global community. As components of the partnership, a team of 2024 GLI Fellows is applying tools and frameworks from the GLI classroom to the context of exploring Tonebase’s day-to-day activities and future opportunities.
The story of tonebase
Launched in 2017, tonebase was born at Yale School of Music, where students, classical guitarists, and co-founders Chris Garwood and Igor Lichtmann worked together to answer a question posed in an Innovation and Collaboration class: “If you could contribute anything to the classical music world, what would it be?”.
Garwood and Lichtmann wanted to fix a problem in music education. The knowledge of the world’s most renowned musicians is often limited to a few who, through talent or substantial economic means, gain access to elite universities and conservatories. To scale the wisdom and inspiration of world-class musicians to all music learners would require a combination of passion for music, education, and premier technology. This eventually resulted in the teaming up with the third co-founder, Abhi Nayar, a computer science major at Yale at the time who was instrumental in building out the initial version of the site. This version focused exclusively on helping music learners to play classical guitar.
The Tonebase business plan was further developed at the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY) in the summer of 2017. Co-founders Chris Garwood and Igor Lichtmann received an eight-week fellowship and mentorship from top business executives. Their initial success with lessons on all things guitar, featuring iconic players such as Leo Brower, Sharon Isbin, Sérgio Assad, among others, was key to securing funding from Silicon Valley investors to expand another instrument, the piano.
In April 2019, Ben Laude, a Juilliard-trained pianist, joined the tonebase team to head the development of tonebase Piano, for which he has produced hundreds of lesson videos and features with dozens of world-class pianists, interviewing the likes of Garrick Ohlsson, Simone Dinnerstein, and Leon Fleisher.
In July 2022, tonebase developed a new line of lessons and masterclasses for violinists. Since inauguration, 20+ world-renowned violinists have taught lessons at tonebase. They include Pinchas Zukerman, James Ehnes, Glenn Dicterow, Nancy Zhou, Aleksey Igudesman, Augustin Hadelich, David Kim, Gilles Apap, among others.
In March 2023, the company launched tonebase cello and, in July 2023, tonebase flute.
The platform look and feel
The platform follows a subscription-based business model, where users receive a free 14-day content trial before deciding whether to subscribe to the ongoing service at various levels of content access.
Tonebase offers more than one thousand video lessons on how to play guitar, piano, violin, cello, flute, covering essential playing techniques and interpretation tips. Courses are designed with very specific learners in mind, from the basic beginner seeking technique fundamentals to the advanced professional performer discovering tutorials on monumental works. It is always recommended to have some essential knowledge to begin the online journey.
Each lesson is presented as an interactive video; the right-hand side of the screen shows the score, and the instructor video is featured on the left side of the screen. Videos allow pausing, zooming in on the score or individual parts, taking notes, and adding bookmarks.
The platform also enables users to engage with focused blogs for each instrument, score libraries, lesson notes with key exercises and essential takeaways, workbooks about technical exercises, and performance preparation advice.
A final component of Tonebase’s subscription is the ability for learners to take part in live events like workshops, group challenges, and ample opportunities to study masterworks of classical music.
Opportunities on the horizon: developing tonebase Voice
As the company looks forward to developing and meeting subscription growth per quarter objectives by diversifying its educational offerings to more instruments, tonebase prepares to launch its most ambitious expansion by early 2024: tonebase Voice.
The strategy for this launch leans on one of the greatest strengths of tonebase’s branding strategy, setting the gold standard through the successful identification and recruitment of stars to lead masterclasses and lessons in unique cinematic quality recordings.
The sector is ripe for advancement. Young opera singers have long been accustomed to the progressive digitalization of preliminary auditions, a standard since 2015 in leading singing competitions: Neue Stimmen, Belvedere Singing Competition, BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, and Operalia, among others. Certificates from world-class singers would mean greater access to an international standard of vocal performance and auditions.
In recent years, opera stars have warmed up to offering pedagogical content on social media. Rachel Willis-Sørensen offers “Wednesday warmup” exercises to her followers every week. Kathryn Lewek chronicles a role development journey, transitioning from Queen of the Night to Lakmé. While artist management companies rush to include digital production as an extension of their management services, a platform of this standard could prove a fertile experimenting ground where artists can safely develop new tactics to keep their followers engaged, close, and ready to meet at performance venues worldwide.
It will be interesting to see how the platform understands the customer journey towards a life in vocal development from the world-class professional to local opera theater star to the aspirational amateur seeking to boost sporadic performance.
Challenges: attracting and retaining beginners
Using star power strategically is a challenge. While the brand communicates quality in its all-star recruitment, tonebase has not lost focus on its democratic mission of making music learning accessible to everyone. Ben Laude offers an insightful reflection of this challenge in his interview with Maryam Raya:
“Tonebase’s broader mission is to “democratize access to high-level music education, so anyone anywhere can learn from the best.” This mission doesn’t exclude beginners, but it does bring up an interesting point: “the best” (meaning, the most esteemed professors and concert artists) are almost never the best at teaching beginners. (…) Tonebase’s first order of business was finding said “best” to teach what they know, i.e., more specialized technical and interpretive ideas, and catering our library towards more experienced amateurs, serious students, and their teachers. As the platform continues to evolve, we are gradually moving in the direction of beginner pedagogy…”
Beginner pedagogy, as Laude rightfully observes, requires more careful planning and curation since distinguished beginner pedagogues rarely achieve celebrity status, but the rewards of developing this are extraordinary. Not only would tonebase fulfill its democratic promise, but it would also cater to a segment with a greater customer lifetime value and a greater potential for loyalty.
Sources:
https://news.yale.edu/2018/01/22/first-person-how-we-are-bringing-high-level-music-education-masses
https://www.pianostreet.com/blog/articles/catching-the-moment-11172/
https://www.thestrad.com/news/learn-from-the-worlds-best-violinists-on-tonebase/15107.article
https://www.maryapiano.com/hofmann-files-ben-laude
https://mordents.com/tonebase-review/
