Hi my name is Mark, I’m on tonebase as “spare machine” and I’m doing a little testimonial. I started using tonebase during the pandemic. I'm not really a classical guitarist, but I came across a nylon string guitar in the new school I was working at, and I borrowed it cuz there were no kids in the school during the pandemic, everybody was learning at home. And started to get interested in music that's normally played on the nylon string guitar.

For me in the beginning that was kind of like Brazilian jazz music, and then I found an arrangement of whatever the theme from Black Orpheus is called, as a kind of classical arrangement — it had tab so I could read the tab, and that eventually got me interested in that. And I found my way to tonebase (or they found me or something I'm not sure) and I did some of their sample lessons, and I really enjoyed it. And as a person who really doesn't read music — I'm getting better at it — but didn't really read music and did not have a classical repertoire but liked that sort of music and liked that sound…tonebase is a great place to explore and learn.

And what I like best about it was there was no feeling of gatekeeping. I could be a sort of like American primitive guitarist — whatever that Travis-style picker, and teach my fingers to do new things, cut my nails a different way, you know? And start playing those songs.

And I found the experience to be really fun, and the music to be really interesting and the people to be very engaging and kind on there. One of the experiences I had was learning to better read music in order to perform some of the pieces. So I got a little app to help me with my reading.

And then I'll talk about one piece in particular. So I kind of self-assessed a level 3 on tonebase but there was a tune that Emmanuel Sowicz arranged, Gracias a La Vida, and he did a little video on it, on arranging it — he talked about why it was interesting to him and choices he made in the arrangement. I thought it was so imaginative and pretty, that I was like “I’m just going to learn that song.”

And it was well, well above my skill level, and I've been playing it for a very long time (which maybe goes against some of the practicing techniques that we talk about on tonebase, but I was like, I don’t care, I’m just going to play this every day, I’m going to do a little bit of it) and I'm finally getting to the place where it sounds like music.

And I share that experience just because that was a tonebase experience for me, where I would have never been able to do that, find that music or play that music, without the help of tonebase.

So I appreciate it. If there are other folks out there who are new to classical music like me, you can find me on tonebase. I’m “spare machine” on tonebase, and I’d love to hear your story.