Guide to Using Tonebase

Hey everyone! I wanted to take some time to share a few best practices for navigating your tonebase experience. Whether you're already very comfortable using the site, or have no idea where to start, let this be your guide! 

Overview

Welcome to tonebase – your online musical home and community. tonebase’s mission is to deliver the highest-quality classical music education on the internet, and we’re so glad you’ve decided to be a part of it.

What are you hoping to get out of your tonebase experience? Whether you need structured practice, beginner-friendly instruction, or musings from the masters, it’s all waiting for you here on tonebase. Let’s jump right in.

Homepage

When you first log in to app.tonebase.co/trumpet, you will be taken to Home. This is where your experience begins. You will see the course you most recently watched, as well as a few Recommended Courses. 

The sidebar on the left side is how you navigate the different areas of the site:

- My Content is where you can see your Practice Plan, recommendations for you, and courses you have in progress. 

- Library is where you can search the entire site, or browse our courses by category: Repertoire, Technique, Instructors, and Composers. 

- My Level is where you can see your Practice Plan in detail. You can also re-take the Level Quiz here to see which courses are right for you! 

- Live Events is where you can watch our livestreams with guests, as well as access old livestreams that have already happened. 

- Forums is where you can access the Community! (This is where you are right now)

- Resources is a collection of a few additional PDFs that might help you on your journey. 

- Finally, to access your account settings, click Account on the bottom left of the screen. 

Watching a Course

When you click on a course, you're taken to this selector screen, where you can see all the individual lessons within the course. Click "Play" to view the lesson.

Scores and Workbooks

Within the lesson player is also where you can download scores and workbooks (note that not ALL courses have associated scores and workbooks.) The buttons will be in the bottom right corner of the video window. "Download Workbook" takes you to our in-house designed PDF summaries of the lesson. "Download Edition" takes you to our custom tonebase edition, often containing artist annotations. Some repertoire pieces say "Find Score" – these are for copyrighted works where we cannot legally offer the full score for download – and we link to the publisher's website. 

Finding Courses

The best place to find a specific course is by clicking Library on the sidebar. Here you can search for a lesson, artist, topic, composer, or piece, and see if we have a course on that topic. You can also browse by category and artist. 

 Clicking on a category allows you to see all the courses in that category:

Practice Plans

Where tonebase really shines is its ability to generate a custom course playlist for you based on your skills.

When you signed up, you likely already took the Level Quiz. If you'd like to take this again, click My Level on the sidebar and click "Re-Take Quiz." Answer the quiz questions as truthfully as you can. Your self-assigned level at a variety of skills will be used to calculate a series of videos designed to help take you to the next level. 

You'll be placed into a level from 1 to 12 (this is just an estimate, of course!) When you click "My Practice Plan" in the image above, you can access the full list of videos we recommend to you now. We suggest you watch the videos in this order, which is why the other videos are locked, but you can simply search for these videos in Library if you'd prefer to watch them out of order. 

 

Live Events

In addition to our ever-growing course library, tonebase trumpet features weekly live streams from guests across the trumpet world! Click Live Events on the sidebar to see the recently streamed events, upcoming events, all past live events, and access the community forums. 

We will send you an e-mail in advance of all livestreams! You always have a chance to ask artists questions directly by using the chat next to the video. (This is a one-of-a-kind opportunity!) 

 

Community Forums

Similar to a number of forum websites you might know, tonebase fosters greater community engagement with its own forum. Here, there are a number of regular opportunities for connection to keep a look out for:

- Discussions of the week: Here I kick off a different discussion each week, allowing us to share our opinions, questions, goals, struggles, and much more. 

- Intensives: Each month there will be a new intensive class, a guided series of brand-new videos on a new topic you can sign up for. (These are free and cost nothing for subscribers). Keep an eye on your e-mail for announcements on new intensive classes. 

- Open-ended threads: At any point, if you have a question you'd like to pose to the trumpet community, you can open General Discussion and click "Start a New Thread." 

Conclusion

Did I miss a feature or leave out a question you have? Leave a comment below! Best of luck using tonebase to enhance your musicianship. 

Peace, love, and double high Cs,

Ethan Chilton 🎺