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You're listening to the PianoPod, where we talk to the brightest minds in the industry
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about how they're bringing the piano into the 21st century.
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Welcome back to the PianoPod for our season finale.
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I am Eric Hunter.
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I'm Yukimi Song.
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And I'm Clara Zhang.
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Today our guest is Ben Lottie, a classical pianist and head of piano at ToneBase.com.
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Ben is a graduate of the Juilliard School and the Shepard School of Music at Rice University.
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He debuted with the Austin Symphony at age 17 and was a prize winner in the Yamaha Young
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Performing Artist and Kingsville International Piano Competitions, among others.
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He has performed at concert halls around the world, including Carnegie Hall's Wild Recital
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Hall and Alice Tully Hall.
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Prior to joining ToneBase, he taught at Bard College and worked as an assistant to the
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well-known radio host and lecturer David Dubal.
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Ben, thank you for being with us today.
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Eric, it's my pleasure.
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Thank you so much.
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Clara, Yukimi, thank you so much for having me.
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Welcome.
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All right.
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So we are really excited to talk about ToneBase, which has been making waves this past year.
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For anybody who doesn't know, can you explain to us what is ToneBase?
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What do you guys do?
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Well, the mission of ToneBase is to democratize music education, which is a loaded phrase.
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So let me unpack that a bit.
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Essentially, actually, this resonates a lot with what I heard you guys talk about in your
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introductory episode, which is this phenomenon of piano teachers and practicing pianists
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feeling the sense of isolation from one another in their craft.
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It's not like doing sports where you're on teams and it's very communal and there's
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crowds all the time.
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There is an often talked about separation between the solitude of the soloist and honestly
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the teaching craft too and the audience and the sort of end results.
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So that alienation, I think, is just one thing that we're trying to push back against with
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ToneBase in our own way and in a new medium using new technologies.
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So democratize might just mean create more accessible and affordable opportunities for
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piano lovers, amateurs, piano teachers spread out wherever they might be to be able to enjoy
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some of the top artists, top performers, top professors from conservatories and concert
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halls around the world with the kind of intimacy that we might only get if we get to attend
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a conservatory and even then not so much.
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I mean, even then it's like, okay, I went to a Murray Pariah master class and I sat
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in the 18th row and maybe I got to shake his hand after, but with ToneBase there's a sense
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of, well, we don't have Pariah yet, fingers crossed, but there's a sense of being able
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to actually be right there in the room with them.
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So it's really helping to deliver a very specialized art form and craft to the masses, if you will.
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So can you tell us a little bit about your offerings?
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It sounds like you have lessons, master classes, how does it work?
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Sure.
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I could show you a little bit if you like.
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Yes, if you would like to show us that.
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If my screen sharing chops are good.
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So I just landed on the ToneBase dashboard.
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I'm already logged in, so I'm a subscriber, but because I work for ToneBase, I don't have
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to pay.
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And there we see Seymour Bernstein teaching me Férolise, as he says appropriately, correctly.
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And why is that there?
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Because it happened to be the last thing I watched.
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So when you land on the page, you get a variety of offerings and videos.
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And if you come to browse, you'll see that we have different categories.
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There's lessons, progress tracks, courses, and then you can sort by composers and artists.
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So just to maybe take you through a little bit, if I wanted to watch a repertoire lesson,
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for example, on, I don't know, name a composer, Clara.
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Chopin.
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Chopin.
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Oh, I think we have some Chopin.
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So I'm going to go to Romantic Repertoire here.
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And I don't know, there's some, I like to look at the list.
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There's our Chopin offerings.
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And oh, look, there's Garak Olson teaching the first ballade.
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So I can now watch one of the great Chopin interpreters of the last half century and
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the only American ever to win the Warsaw International Competition Prize.
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Can you hear that?
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Are you hearing that?
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Or is it just me?
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Not yet.
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I think you didn't share your sound, maybe.
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That's fine.
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So you see Garak there, an hour and a half lesson on one of the most famous, cherished
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pieces.
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And this is just one of hundreds of videos we have.
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So that's just a little taste.
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But you see right there, I'm right next to Garak, who, you know, I just, when I directed
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Garak, I just pressed his on button and he just poured out this, you know, long form
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structured lesson about this piece that he's known intimately ever since he heard Rubenstein
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play it in Carnegie Hall like 50 years ago or whenever.
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So this is not something you can get everywhere or really anywhere.
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YouTube doesn't have it.
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Masterclass.com doesn't have it.
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There's no real way to experience that level of like very thorough, detail, high quality
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insights and inspiration into this music that we love and also have resources, a score available
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and tools to take notes and in addition that we've created, you know, with space for annotation.
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So that's just one sampling.
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There's other kinds of offerings.
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There's progress tracks, which help you progress from maybe beginner to intermediate levels
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in various musicianship categories and technique.
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There's interview features that I've just had the absolute honor and privilege to do
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with some of the great legends of piano and I hope to do more of those.
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I just did one recently actually and we have got a big release in a month with Emmanuel
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Axe and so that's a big deal.
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And just, we can talk about him if you want later.
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Got to meet him and work with him and he's just the most special person in the world.
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So anyway, my job is I'm really lucky and but most importantly, tone based, I think
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is important thing and you can get a taste of it there.
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And I really recommend it highly to music lovers, pianists, piano teachers, just watching
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these great artists teach and speak their craft is invaluable.
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It's very educational for our level of pianists too, but also seems like you're reaching out
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to beginner intermediate levels.
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So and it's not only educational, but also quite entertaining because I so particular
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one that I remember was John Kimura Parker.
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He was actually doing his lecture from his home studio, I think.
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It's actually that's his studio at Rice at the show.
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Oh, I see.
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Okay.
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But he makes it very homey.
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He's got a couch in there.
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He's got all of his Star Trek memorabilia all over the walls.
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So it feels like it's his home office.
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Yes.
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And it feels like he's really giving you a lecture right next to you.
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Right.
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That intimacy that you're creating and he shares his personal anecdotes with the piece,
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connection to the piece.
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So it's very actually quite entertaining.
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And I saw not only his lectures, but also Fred Tsu, who was our guest of the show a
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couple months ago.
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And then yes, and he's incredible.
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So I saw a lot of incredible unique things on tone base, very distinctive about from,
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let's say YouTube, because before Tom base, I used to go to YouTube and look for more
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materials to learn from, from these old, all these big names like a listers, right.
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But now with Tom base, I think it's more like very well organized.
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But also I feel like I used to go to summer camp and then, you know, after I graduate
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from masters in Europe or something, and then I have to pick which summer camp I want to
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go to because there is the famous teacher on this summer camp, but there's another
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teacher I want to study with on.
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But now with this tone base, I feel like I just get to choose from the home screen with
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the click of a button.
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That's one of the goals.
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I hope if we keep growing and expanding and I'm able to attract as many of these great
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artists as I can, that it really will feel like, you know, not that people will choose
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tone base over summer festivals.
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If anything, it should help facilitate people to want to go to more and more festivals because
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they'll be able to meet these artists on tone base first.
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But yeah, it should be basically a little microcosm of our whole piano world or piano
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universe.
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You know, that's a little ambitious.
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We have a huge repertoire.
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We're never going to teach all those pieces.
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We have there's, you know, a thousand great concert pianists, at least, you know, touring
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the world right now.
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We'll enroll only ever going to get, you know, a portion of them.
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But at the same time, yeah, that's that's you came.
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That's one of the ideas is that this is a way to experience that in-person festival
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conservatory concert hall experience.
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But sort of, you know, with a click of a mouse.
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In my opinion, I also feel like you're protecting all the artists because YouTube is basically
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it's free unless they get sponsors or something.
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But you know, classical music is usually a niche base.
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So I feel like with the millions of postings on YouTube per day, I guess our content, the
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content that I want to watch is pretty much buried.
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So you are tone basis actually helping all these artists of their content and copyright.
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I feel like I think so.
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And I mean, YouTube is just it's everything.
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It's it's too much, which is great.
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I mean, you could get lost in it.
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We all do.
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And it will always be a resource.
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I mean, I think it'll be be with us forever until until the apocalypse, perhaps.
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But before then, YouTube, of course, still has its limitations.
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And it sort of requires these other premium platforms to complement it so that maybe you
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notice a tone based video on YouTube or you see an artist you like and then you Google
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them and you say, I want to find more and I want to find the highest quality.
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Where can I get that?
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And that's where something like tone base or master class or Netflix or any of these
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premium subscription video content platforms, whether it's entertainment or education, come
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in handy for a relatively modest price compared to a lot of things we pay for.
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You can get this just sort of extensive access to something that YouTube can't achieve on
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its own.
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And that way we can be a business.
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We can pay our artists fairly and also be able to promote them in a way that is like
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you said, you give me is probably lost a little bit with the sort of YouTube effect of everybody's
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stuff being diluted and sort of lost in the mix.
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So here's a way that we can say, no, no, no, in this place, there's something special happening
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and we can promote that and then take it back to social media and Google and and even YouTube
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and say, hey, guys, it's like let's we want to share this with with the world, too.
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And we want to invite you to to come in and experience it.
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So Ben, I wanted to ask you, you guys have this incredible roster of artists right now.
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I mean, so you showed us there's an hour and a half long lesson with Garak Olson on Chopin.
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For most people, the only way to get close to him would be to go to one of his concerts
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if he happened to come to your city that you live in.
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And then you've got other huge names like Leon Fleischer, Gary Grafman, Seymour Bernstein.
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How did you guys get started?
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Let me start with the piano platform because the the actual the pilot platform, if you
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will, was is for classical guitar.
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And that was actually right two years before piano.
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And I was hired once the company raised enough funding to expand to help launch the piano
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platform.
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And it came on in the spring of twenty nineteen and the first four to six months of my job
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was almost exclusively trying to recruit artists.
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So for every Garak Olson I got, there were 20 equal artists who didn't respond or said
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no.
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Now, I always treat the door as being open still.
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And actually, some of those artists, including Maniacs, I was able to return to.
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He never said no.
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But what he said was, why me, I'm so he's so modest.
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You know, I don't know what I could offer you that would be useful.
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And then we weren't able to put something together.
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But two years later, when I was able to show him what we did with Garak, what we did with
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Leon Fleischer and others, I mean, I was able to I was just more experienced and was able
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to get somebody of his caliber.
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So it was not easy.
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I mean, it's a lot of emailing and just grunt work of trying to you know, these people get
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asked for stuff all the time.
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You know, they that's why they have agents, you know, and we try to kind of avoid managers
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to some degree, because we're not going to put up the kinds of, you know, fees that Carnegie
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Hall and we're not going to pay them $50,000.
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Of course, we don't have that.
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So it can't be that kind of engagement from our side.
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It's still I think, a very fair price that we're paying, you know, depending on the artist.
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But it's something more that's I think they have to want to do it.
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You know, it can't be the kind of thing where their publicist or their manager says do this,
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because it's going to be good for your public image or something.
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And so with somebody like Garak, I was introduced to him through Nicholas Rosado, who's actually
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the artistic director at 92nd Street Y wonderful organist.
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And he knew Garak from organizing concerts there with him.
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And he set me up with him by email.
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Garak happened to be in New York City when I was spring or the summer of 2019.
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We met at the Nice Metin on 79th and Columbus, I think.
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And he was staying at the hotel above there.
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And we just talked about piano and pianists for like an hour and a half.
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And I was just that I could have like died and you know, quit my job that night, and
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I would have been happy.
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But that was just the beginning of a wonderful collaboration with him that extends to this
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day.
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I still am in touch with him.
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I called him before the Maniacs, you know, session just to be like, tell me about Manny,
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because you've known each other since you were 15.
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And so I'm just so privileged and blessed to be able to have somebody with that caliber
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of a pianist and that magnitude of an intellect to offer his time and services for us and
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be able to share the extraordinary lessons and interviews that he did with us.
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So he was a big help at first, but I also, you know, I went to Juilliard, I have connections,
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I was able to get some professors.
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I know a lot of successful young pianists and I just did a lot of cold emailing too.
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At some point I was like, all right, let's just find every major music school and conservatory
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starting in the United States, but I'm branching out to other countries as well.
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And just going to start sending basically the same version of the same email to everyone
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and that's how I got people like Simone Dinerstein and Rebecca Pennies and some others.
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So that worked too.
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And getting off the ground was the hardest.
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And now that we've launched and established ourselves and people have heard of us, it's
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getting easier, but there's other challenges too, because now we have lots of different
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priorities, lots of initiatives.
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And so recruiting artists is just one of them at this stage, but I'm back at it.
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And Martha Argrich, if you're listening right now, no, but anyway, so yeah, that's just
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that's been a core part of the job and it's not easy at all.
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There's no magic to it.
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It's just hard work.
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Right, right.
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Yeah, that makes sense.
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I mean, as a new podcast, we can certainly sympathize, but it does get easier once you
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have an established body of work to show off.
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And I have to say your production values are incredible.
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I just want to mention that a little bit for anybody who hasn't seen any of ToneBase's
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videos yet.
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They have a lot of samples on YouTube, great stuff.
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Like I'm just the camera angles are so informative.
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You get the over the hands shot of one of these pianists playing as well as the side
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angle and just top audio quality, video quality.
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Really good stuff.
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Plus the score.
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Yes, the score.
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Exactly.
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Yeah, that is very helpful.
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And all of that is part of a workflow with great people and great teammates behind the
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scenes and great contractors that I work with around the states.
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We're not in a position yet that we can fly a production crew anywhere in the world.
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So we have really wonderful collaborators who are videographer and audio crews in different
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parts of the country who we trust and rely on and have just done really great work for
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us.
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But especially my teammates, I wouldn't be able to do any of this without them.
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The scores that you see, the editing that takes place.
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I have my hand in a lot of this or most of it.
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But ever since the beginning, where I actually did try to do absolutely everything along
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with the head of production, Sean Mulholland, we've been able to expand, add more people
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to the team, bring more people on.
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It's really a wonderful group of dedicated musicians and web developers essentially.
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So that brought me to my question, Ben.
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I think sometimes when you keep on thinking about something that this thing would just
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show up.
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So in the beginning of pandemic, when we first started our podcast, and I remember I keep
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on noticing Tone Bass online and online and I registered for this lunch club and all of
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a sudden I was connected with Abbie, I think, on your team.
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And then we were like, oh, wow, Tone Bass.
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And so I told these two guys, I was like, oh my God, this is amazing.
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So he told me a little bit about the behind the scenes.
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But I want to know what is your role as the head of piano?
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Obviously you connect all the artists, but how does it work with the programmers and
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the technology?
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I think it's very innovative because as musicians sometimes we are so used to just hiding the
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practice room and practice, but what you guys are doing are so cool.
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Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, Abbie is a genius.
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I think he's like 24, which means he's one of the founders of Tone Bass.
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So just to give a little bit of a profile of these three, because really this traces
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back to them and what they started, although a lot has developed since then.
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Abbie was the third founder to be added to the sort of triumvirate that began all of
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this.
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But the sort of two original musicians who spawned the idea were Igor Lichman and Chris
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Garwood.
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And they are classical guitarists who met at Yale during their masters studying with
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Ben Verdery.
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And they met in a class taught by a woman named Astrid Baumgarner.
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I don't know if you've heard of her, but she teaches the music and business class at Yale.
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She's a philanthropist, amateur pianist herself, lives in New York City.
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I happened to have given her a lesson once because she still takes lessons.
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Her primary teacher is Peter Dugan, who's now the host of From the Top, wonderful pianist,
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just played with Joshua Bell in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
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Peter's one of my best friends from way back.
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And so when Igor and Chris and Abbie were looking for a pianist to sort of build the
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platform, they reached out to Astrid, among others, and said, hey, who do you know?
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And Astrid said, well, I know Peter Dugan.
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But Peter Dugan's so awesome and busy, like, you know, he's not going to have time to do
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this kind of intense job.
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It's a full-time job.
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It's what I do all the time.
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But I, knowing Peter, was looking for a job.
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I had my doctorate and I was like, let's put this to work.
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Let's apply for the tenure track positions.
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Let's do the whole thing.
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And so it was just good timing.
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It was right in the middle of that season when I was waiting to hear back from the Boston
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University had a job open, University of Maryland, Baltimore County had a job.
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And I'm just like, can I get an assistant professor position somewhere?
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And then I get this email and Peter forwards it from Astrid.
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And I read the tone-based job description for head of piano.
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It just sounded like a joke.
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I was like, there's no such job that exists.
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That's impossible.
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I also happened to be somebody who always loved media and film.
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And like every high school project I had in class, I would, I wouldn't make a poster.
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I would go edit something on iMovie and just have a fun time.
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And I even applied to USC for undergrad because I wanted to do music and film stuff.
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So I always was like, will I ever be able to do something in video media again?
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Because it's one of my passions, like dating back to childhood.
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So I'm just reading this job description.
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It's like, yeah, you need to have at least a master's in piano performance.
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You need to be well connected in the piano world.
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You need to know the piano repertoire.
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You need to have like writing skills and media.
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And I'm just like, these are the five things that I dedicated my life to.
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And so I just, I couldn't believe it because I had no idea what was going to be the next
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chapter in my life.
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I wasn't particularly looking forward to it.
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So I just consider myself extremely lucky that that happened and that I knew people
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like Peter.
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And this is why you make friends at summer camps and stay friends with everybody and
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are nice to people, by the way, it helps your life out.
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But just that connection really helped.
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And so Igor and Chris and Abhi, they met at the school and just very briefly, Igor and
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Chris first started a kind of Facebook, I guess, page that was called maybe practice
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portal or something.
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I don't know the exact history, but the idea there was just let's have great guitarists
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film their practice sessions, just like open.
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So you have a window in this kind of a, and then they sort of, that was their project
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for Astrid's class.
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And then that summer, I believe they got involved with the Yale management school who sort of
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mentored them a bit.
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And that's when they realized, OK, we need a kind of more intentional business model
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here and we need to find a programmer.
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We need to find a whiz kid.
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Right.
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That's when they found Abhi, who was an undergrad at the time, you know, a few years younger
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than Chris and Igor.
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And I mean, he was he could have gone and made instant high salaries, you know, being
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a developer for Amazon or wherever.
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And he wanted to do something that was his and that.
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Yeah, he seemed very passionate to the world.
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Yeah, and so just he played piano as a kid, but he leads the product team.
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The product team has expanded now.
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So we have developers, some of the musicians themselves spread out around the country now
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because everything's remote and they're working on the back end all the time just to support
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the platform, to encode everything and to just make sure it's a smooth experience for
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our users.
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And that's that's a really intense job.
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And I feel for them because I get to be on podcasts talking to you and talking about
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how I interviewed a man who acts or whatever and had coffee with Garrett Olson.
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And none of this would even be seen if it weren't for the invisible people behind the
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scenes led by Abhi, who are just working constantly to make sure that it's an awesome platform.
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So anyway, that's a long winded answer to, I guess, the behind the scenes question, but
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happy to dive in more if you're curious about specifics about how these things actually
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end up looking the way they look.
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Right, right.
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Oh my gosh.
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Yeah, you keep me going.
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I'm more interested in about the technical part.
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So you have a team of people who does all the cameras and setting up audios and yeah.
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So can you just tell us?
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So we now do this more and more in-house because finally we were like, hey, let's invest in
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our own studio in LA.
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And it actually happens to be in Hollywood, although that's just incidental.
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It's not like we're in one of these famous studios.
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We're not Paramount Pictures.
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It just happens to be on Gower Street, a block from the Hollywood Walk of Fame, because we
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found a kind of nice space there that we can convert into a recording studio.
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So yes, I'm a Hollywood producer.
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That's what that means.
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But it's not that fancy.
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It's just very useful and practical for us.
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And so finally in-house, we're able to, with the leadership of Sean Mulholland and other
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wonderful editors and videographers on our team, like Phil is somebody I work with all
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the time.
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These guys are just like, some of them are musicians.
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Some of them are coming from the media or the videography world.
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And Phil Engel is just an incredible, like he was making music videos.
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He was making videos for like Billboard and stuff before this.
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And so we brought him in and he's able to share his talents with us.
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And Sean was a classical guitarist, but he's always had a sort of tech interest and very
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skilled with just being able to set up microphones and just, he's an audiophile and he just gets
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this stuff.
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And so they've helped design this set.
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They helped run our in-house productions.
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Now we use Blackmagic cameras, 4K.
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And it's not just 4K, by the way.
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It's about lighting, it's about a color, it's about recording in a certain kind of flat
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color profile.
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That's so that when you edit later, you can color correct.
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All of that happens.
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That's why it looks so good.
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So it's not just about, like I saw some ad the other day for a new camera that's 8K and
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it says just like film.
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If you film at 8K and you have bad lighting and the color profile is off for whatever
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reason, it's not going to look good.
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It's actually going to look really weird because now it's like 8K and you're seeing very vividly
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an image that's very distorted.
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So it's an art and a science at the same time to actually make media look this good.
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And we're, I'd say we're at, we're second tier to the first tier of HBO and Masterclass.com
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and Netflix shows and Amazon shows that you guys watch.
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We use some of the same gear.
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We have entry level professional equipment.
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But what they're doing, it requires much bigger budgets, obviously.
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So I'm very proud of what we have made.
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I think it looks fantastic, especially for piano lessons.
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That's not usually something that you get a cinematic experience for.
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So I'm really happy with where we're at, but it's something that I am meticulous about
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too.
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Like I want things to look as professional as possible and have production values be
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as high as possible.
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I mean, it's a dream come true for all the artists and pianists, even as a viewer.
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It's a really dream come true.
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Yeah.
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I mean, I think a lot of pianists are used to seeing bums like us in our homes on YouTube.
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So I mean, don't sell yourself short.
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I think the quality is incredible.
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Thank you.
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I mean, I, yeah, I mean, I'm used to just iPhone videos too.
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Like I didn't, I'm just lucky that I get to work with people who have access to this equipment.
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And I should mention Point of Order Productions, led by Christopher and Mary Smith.
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They've done all, most of our Northeast stuff.
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And guess what?
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Most pianists live in either New York or Boston or Baltimore or Philly.
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So I've been, you know, between those cities with them, they traveled to the Berkshires
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to work with Manny with me.
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They have awesome Canon C500s and really state of the art lights.
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And Christopher Smith just got a Canon R5, which has a stabilizer.
462
00:29:09,600 --> 00:29:14,280
So he was able to like do all kinds of motion shots with Manny that aren't without a gimbal.
463
00:29:14,280 --> 00:29:19,040
So like, it's actually still stabilized enough to really feel like you're there.
464
00:29:19,040 --> 00:29:24,560
I don't know if you've seen the fly on the wall video productions that are made in London,
465
00:29:24,560 --> 00:29:29,080
but you know, Boris Giltberg and Claire Hoangse have been on them, but you get this feeling
466
00:29:29,080 --> 00:29:32,420
that you're like right next to the pianist playing.
467
00:29:32,420 --> 00:29:36,840
So we're going to have actually some of that with Manny Axe, which is going to be...
468
00:29:36,840 --> 00:29:40,440
I could go watch lots of videos of Axe playing right now on YouTube.
469
00:29:40,440 --> 00:29:45,800
But what I can't do is feel like I'm this close to it and that it's even better than
470
00:29:45,800 --> 00:29:48,220
real life, the picture quality.
471
00:29:48,220 --> 00:29:50,180
So that's, that matters.
472
00:29:50,180 --> 00:29:56,840
You know, it's not directly part of the educational experience, but it certainly enhances it.
473
00:29:56,840 --> 00:29:57,840
It's certainly part of it.
474
00:29:57,840 --> 00:30:01,480
Of course, because you kind of have to have the entertainment quality to it.
475
00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:05,280
I also want to shout out to those students that are watching.
476
00:30:05,280 --> 00:30:10,640
We have all these young students that eventually turn into teenagers and go to college and
477
00:30:10,640 --> 00:30:14,480
they don't know what to do with music if they don't major in music.
478
00:30:14,480 --> 00:30:17,060
These are great examples.
479
00:30:17,060 --> 00:30:23,160
These days we're all like, they're all high tech, growing up from a few years old.
480
00:30:23,160 --> 00:30:28,760
If they can come up with ideas like this, or I think tone bass is a great inspiration
481
00:30:28,760 --> 00:30:32,320
for a younger generation, right, to just brainstorm.
482
00:30:32,320 --> 00:30:33,720
We don't have to be.
483
00:30:33,720 --> 00:30:37,920
And also just, I have to tell you a little secret.
484
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:46,120
I was watching you with Samuel Bernstein last night, again, probably for the fifth time,
485
00:30:46,120 --> 00:30:49,760
and I dropped a little cocktail tear.
486
00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:53,120
I studied with him when I was...
487
00:30:53,120 --> 00:30:57,160
So I moved here from China to Kansas when I was 17.
488
00:30:57,160 --> 00:31:01,600
And then at one point my teacher was like, if you want to go to New York, go study with
489
00:31:01,600 --> 00:31:02,600
Seymour.
490
00:31:02,600 --> 00:31:06,920
And so I remember writing this email to Seymour in the library or something.
491
00:31:06,920 --> 00:31:07,920
And he was like, sure, come.
492
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:12,600
And so I dragged my suitcase, come to New York City from Topeka, Kansas.
493
00:31:12,600 --> 00:31:13,920
And he was just so nice.
494
00:31:13,920 --> 00:31:15,320
It was just so nice to me.
495
00:31:15,320 --> 00:31:16,320
Isn't he amazing?
496
00:31:16,320 --> 00:31:17,320
He was just...
497
00:31:17,320 --> 00:31:21,360
The hand, like you guys were talking about the hand.
498
00:31:21,360 --> 00:31:25,640
And then he was like, Clara, Clara, Clara Schumann also touched this hand.
499
00:31:25,640 --> 00:31:27,360
I was just like, oh my God.
500
00:31:27,360 --> 00:31:29,320
Well, a lot of stories.
501
00:31:29,320 --> 00:31:35,440
Yeah, there's a reason why he was able to impress somebody like Ethan Hawke at a dinner
502
00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:39,880
party so much that Ethan Hawke had to drop everything he was going to do for a year in
503
00:31:39,880 --> 00:31:42,360
order to make a film about this guy.
504
00:31:42,360 --> 00:31:45,160
He's intoxicating, he's hypnotizing.
505
00:31:45,160 --> 00:31:49,120
He'll be all of your friends and he won't want to be all of your teachers.
506
00:31:49,120 --> 00:31:54,560
He's just completely selfless and giving when it comes to his knowledge of piano.
507
00:31:54,560 --> 00:31:58,640
And he's one of the few serious...
508
00:31:58,640 --> 00:32:03,120
I mean, he's actually weirdly not mainstream in the sense that you're not going to see
509
00:32:03,120 --> 00:32:04,120
him...
510
00:32:04,120 --> 00:32:08,280
I mean, he has this incredible biography where he quit performing at 50.
511
00:32:08,280 --> 00:32:13,200
He wasn't exactly trying to rub shoulders with all of the giants of piano and the professors.
512
00:32:13,200 --> 00:32:16,560
In fact, he wrote books very critical of a lot of piano professors.
513
00:32:16,560 --> 00:32:19,000
There's one called, I think, Angels and Monsters.
514
00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:24,800
And there's a whole lot of monsters in the world in the history of piano teaching, which
515
00:32:24,800 --> 00:32:26,440
is a whole topic we could discuss.
516
00:32:26,440 --> 00:32:28,800
But Seymour is not a monster.
517
00:32:28,800 --> 00:32:33,000
He believes in all of his students and he believes in their potential.
518
00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:38,360
And he has, I think, the right philosophy, which is that the job of the teacher is not
519
00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:46,440
to push technique and musicality into a student, but to draw it out of them and to reveal for
520
00:32:46,440 --> 00:32:51,560
them, help them reveal what they already know, which goes back to ancient philosophy.
521
00:32:51,560 --> 00:32:56,080
This is an idea of education that I believe in too, even if I don't always practice it
522
00:32:56,080 --> 00:32:57,080
so successfully.
523
00:32:57,080 --> 00:33:00,880
We're often in positions where we feel like we have to teach it into the student.
524
00:33:00,880 --> 00:33:02,640
It's more so wonderful.
525
00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:07,320
And I hope in that session with me, you kind of see it happening to me.
526
00:33:07,320 --> 00:33:10,320
Oh, for sure.
527
00:33:10,320 --> 00:33:11,440
It's a magic trick.
528
00:33:11,440 --> 00:33:15,040
It's like he doesn't do anything at all.
529
00:33:15,040 --> 00:33:16,520
He doesn't say, that's the moon.
530
00:33:16,520 --> 00:33:18,280
He really does have magic.
531
00:33:18,280 --> 00:33:21,680
He helps you look at the moon and discover it for yourself.
532
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:23,320
It's just he's wonderful.
533
00:33:23,320 --> 00:33:27,800
And he's able to make teaching technique an expressive musical thing, which, of course,
534
00:33:27,800 --> 00:33:29,320
is all of our challenge as a teacher.
535
00:33:29,320 --> 00:33:36,840
How do you make technique into something that's not just athletic training, but at one and
536
00:33:36,840 --> 00:33:43,320
the same time, a human expressive act?
537
00:33:43,320 --> 00:33:48,920
And I think that mission is so important because, of course, we're always so divided between
538
00:33:48,920 --> 00:33:54,160
this false dichotomy of technique and musicianship or musicality, right?
539
00:33:54,160 --> 00:34:00,160
As if you're supposed to work on your technique first and then sprinkle the musical sauce
540
00:34:00,160 --> 00:34:03,440
on afterward rather than baking them in together.
541
00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:05,360
And he always bakes them in together.
542
00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:07,160
His recipe is always both.
543
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:10,880
Well, I think he's also just incredibly kind, right?
544
00:34:10,880 --> 00:34:13,040
I remember just all these things.
545
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:16,320
Did you study with him before you interviewed him?
546
00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:17,640
No, that's what's crazy.
547
00:34:17,640 --> 00:34:19,560
I met him like three days before that.
548
00:34:19,560 --> 00:34:20,560
I see.
549
00:34:20,560 --> 00:34:22,320
And it looks like we've known each other for years.
550
00:34:22,320 --> 00:34:23,320
That's how he treats people.
551
00:34:23,320 --> 00:34:24,960
And he's not just kind.
552
00:34:24,960 --> 00:34:25,960
He's funny.
553
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:26,960
He's funny as hell.
554
00:34:26,960 --> 00:34:27,960
Right, he is.
555
00:34:27,960 --> 00:34:32,440
And the jokes in there, just the deadpan.
556
00:34:32,440 --> 00:34:34,920
Yeah, he's so wonderful.
557
00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:36,520
I can't believe he's 94.
558
00:34:36,520 --> 00:34:39,040
Well, he looks still very young.
559
00:34:39,040 --> 00:34:44,640
You know, my piano tuner, Telly, she's like best friend with him.
560
00:34:44,640 --> 00:34:46,160
So I still get updates from.
561
00:34:46,160 --> 00:34:49,320
I mean, I was actually at the premiere of that movie.
562
00:34:49,320 --> 00:34:52,800
My adult student at the time was the PR.
563
00:34:52,800 --> 00:34:56,480
And I happened to play this concert at Lesztosky and he was there.
564
00:34:56,480 --> 00:35:00,280
And I had a friend and he was like, oh, Claire from Kansas, you're back.
565
00:35:00,280 --> 00:35:01,280
Where are you?
566
00:35:01,280 --> 00:35:04,760
You know, it's like after all these years, he still remembers you.
567
00:35:04,760 --> 00:35:08,960
And that's just like, oh my God, you know, how can that be possible?
568
00:35:08,960 --> 00:35:09,960
Anyway.
569
00:35:09,960 --> 00:35:16,080
This concludes part one of our interview with Ben Lottie.
570
00:35:16,080 --> 00:35:20,680
Tune in next time to learn how ToneBase integrates with traditional lessons and their plans for
571
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expanding in the future.
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:11,020
You're listening to the PianoPod, where we talk to the brightest minds in the industry
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about how they're bringing the piano into the 21st century.
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Welcome back to the PianoPod for our season finale.
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I am Eric Hunter.
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I'm Yukimi Song.
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And I'm Clara Zhang.
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Today our guest is Ben Lottie, a classical pianist and head of piano at ToneBase.com.
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Ben is a graduate of the Juilliard School and the Shepard School of Music at Rice University.
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He debuted with the Austin Symphony at age 17 and was a prize winner in the Yamaha Young
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Performing Artist and Kingsville International Piano Competitions, among others.
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He has performed at concert halls around the world, including Carnegie Hall's Wild Recital
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Hall and Alice Tully Hall.
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Prior to joining ToneBase, he taught at Bard College and worked as an assistant to the
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well-known radio host and lecturer David Dubal.
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Ben, thank you for being with us today.
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Eric, it's my pleasure.
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Thank you so much.
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Clara, Yukimi, thank you so much for having me.
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Welcome.
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All right.
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So we are really excited to talk about ToneBase, which has been making waves this past year.
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For anybody who doesn't know, can you explain to us what is ToneBase?
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What do you guys do?
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Well, the mission of ToneBase is to democratize music education, which is a loaded phrase.
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So let me unpack that a bit.
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Essentially, actually, this resonates a lot with what I heard you guys talk about in your
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introductory episode, which is this phenomenon of piano teachers and practicing pianists
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feeling the sense of isolation from one another in their craft.
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It's not like doing sports where you're on teams and it's very communal and there's
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crowds all the time.
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There is an often talked about separation between the solitude of the soloist and honestly
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the teaching craft too and the audience and the sort of end results.
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So that alienation, I think, is just one thing that we're trying to push back against with
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ToneBase in our own way and in a new medium using new technologies.
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So democratize might just mean create more accessible and affordable opportunities for
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piano lovers, amateurs, piano teachers spread out wherever they might be to be able to enjoy
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some of the top artists, top performers, top professors from conservatories and concert
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halls around the world with the kind of intimacy that we might only get if we get to attend
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a conservatory and even then not so much.
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I mean, even then it's like, okay, I went to a Murray Pariah master class and I sat
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in the 18th row and maybe I got to shake his hand after, but with ToneBase there's a sense
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of, well, we don't have Pariah yet, fingers crossed, but there's a sense of being able
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to actually be right there in the room with them.
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So it's really helping to deliver a very specialized art form and craft to the masses, if you will.
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00:03:12,080 --> 00:03:14,200
So can you tell us a little bit about your offerings?
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It sounds like you have lessons, master classes, how does it work?
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Sure.
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I could show you a little bit if you like.
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Yes, if you would like to show us that.
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If my screen sharing chops are good.
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So I just landed on the ToneBase dashboard.
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I'm already logged in, so I'm a subscriber, but because I work for ToneBase, I don't have
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to pay.
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And there we see Seymour Bernstein teaching me Férolise, as he says appropriately, correctly.
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And why is that there?
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Because it happened to be the last thing I watched.
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So when you land on the page, you get a variety of offerings and videos.
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And if you come to browse, you'll see that we have different categories.
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There's lessons, progress tracks, courses, and then you can sort by composers and artists.
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So just to maybe take you through a little bit, if I wanted to watch a repertoire lesson,
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for example, on, I don't know, name a composer, Clara.
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Chopin.
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Chopin.
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Oh, I think we have some Chopin.
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So I'm going to go to Romantic Repertoire here.
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And I don't know, there's some, I like to look at the list.
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There's our Chopin offerings.
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And oh, look, there's Garak Olson teaching the first ballade.
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So I can now watch one of the great Chopin interpreters of the last half century and
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the only American ever to win the Warsaw International Competition Prize.
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Can you hear that?
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Are you hearing that?
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Or is it just me?
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Not yet.
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I think you didn't share your sound, maybe.
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That's fine.
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So you see Garak there, an hour and a half lesson on one of the most famous, cherished
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pieces.
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And this is just one of hundreds of videos we have.
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So that's just a little taste.
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But you see right there, I'm right next to Garak, who, you know, I just, when I directed
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Garak, I just pressed his on button and he just poured out this, you know, long form
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structured lesson about this piece that he's known intimately ever since he heard Rubenstein
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play it in Carnegie Hall like 50 years ago or whenever.
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So this is not something you can get everywhere or really anywhere.
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YouTube doesn't have it.
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Masterclass.com doesn't have it.
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There's no real way to experience that level of like very thorough, detail, high quality
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insights and inspiration into this music that we love and also have resources, a score available
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and tools to take notes and in addition that we've created, you know, with space for annotation.
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So that's just one sampling.
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There's other kinds of offerings.
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There's progress tracks, which help you progress from maybe beginner to intermediate levels
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in various musicianship categories and technique.
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There's interview features that I've just had the absolute honor and privilege to do
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with some of the great legends of piano and I hope to do more of those.
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I just did one recently actually and we have got a big release in a month with Emmanuel
98
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Axe and so that's a big deal.
99
00:06:21,000 --> 00:06:23,760
And just, we can talk about him if you want later.
100
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Got to meet him and work with him and he's just the most special person in the world.
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So anyway, my job is I'm really lucky and but most importantly, tone based, I think
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is important thing and you can get a taste of it there.
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And I really recommend it highly to music lovers, pianists, piano teachers, just watching
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these great artists teach and speak their craft is invaluable.
105
00:06:45,440 --> 00:06:53,920
It's very educational for our level of pianists too, but also seems like you're reaching out
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to beginner intermediate levels.
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So and it's not only educational, but also quite entertaining because I so particular
108
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one that I remember was John Kimura Parker.
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He was actually doing his lecture from his home studio, I think.
110
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It's actually that's his studio at Rice at the show.
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Oh, I see.
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Okay.
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But he makes it very homey.
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He's got a couch in there.
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He's got all of his Star Trek memorabilia all over the walls.
116
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So it feels like it's his home office.
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Yes.
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And it feels like he's really giving you a lecture right next to you.
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Right.
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That intimacy that you're creating and he shares his personal anecdotes with the piece,
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connection to the piece.
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So it's very actually quite entertaining.
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And I saw not only his lectures, but also Fred Tsu, who was our guest of the show a
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couple months ago.
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And then yes, and he's incredible.
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So I saw a lot of incredible unique things on tone base, very distinctive about from,
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let's say YouTube, because before Tom base, I used to go to YouTube and look for more
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materials to learn from, from these old, all these big names like a listers, right.
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But now with Tom base, I think it's more like very well organized.
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But also I feel like I used to go to summer camp and then, you know, after I graduate
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from masters in Europe or something, and then I have to pick which summer camp I want to
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go to because there is the famous teacher on this summer camp, but there's another
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teacher I want to study with on.
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But now with this tone base, I feel like I just get to choose from the home screen with
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the click of a button.
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That's one of the goals.
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I hope if we keep growing and expanding and I'm able to attract as many of these great
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artists as I can, that it really will feel like, you know, not that people will choose
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tone base over summer festivals.
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If anything, it should help facilitate people to want to go to more and more festivals because
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they'll be able to meet these artists on tone base first.
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But yeah, it should be basically a little microcosm of our whole piano world or piano
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universe.
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You know, that's a little ambitious.
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We have a huge repertoire.
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We're never going to teach all those pieces.
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We have there's, you know, a thousand great concert pianists, at least, you know, touring
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the world right now.
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We'll enroll only ever going to get, you know, a portion of them.
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But at the same time, yeah, that's that's you came.
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That's one of the ideas is that this is a way to experience that in-person festival
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conservatory concert hall experience.
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But sort of, you know, with a click of a mouse.
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In my opinion, I also feel like you're protecting all the artists because YouTube is basically
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it's free unless they get sponsors or something.
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But you know, classical music is usually a niche base.
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So I feel like with the millions of postings on YouTube per day, I guess our content, the
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content that I want to watch is pretty much buried.
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So you are tone basis actually helping all these artists of their content and copyright.
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I feel like I think so.
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And I mean, YouTube is just it's everything.
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It's it's too much, which is great.
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I mean, you could get lost in it.
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We all do.
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And it will always be a resource.
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I mean, I think it'll be be with us forever until until the apocalypse, perhaps.
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But before then, YouTube, of course, still has its limitations.
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And it sort of requires these other premium platforms to complement it so that maybe you
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notice a tone based video on YouTube or you see an artist you like and then you Google
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them and you say, I want to find more and I want to find the highest quality.
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Where can I get that?
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And that's where something like tone base or master class or Netflix or any of these
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premium subscription video content platforms, whether it's entertainment or education, come
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in handy for a relatively modest price compared to a lot of things we pay for.
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You can get this just sort of extensive access to something that YouTube can't achieve on
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its own.
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And that way we can be a business.
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We can pay our artists fairly and also be able to promote them in a way that is like
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you said, you give me is probably lost a little bit with the sort of YouTube effect of everybody's
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stuff being diluted and sort of lost in the mix.
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So here's a way that we can say, no, no, no, in this place, there's something special happening
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and we can promote that and then take it back to social media and Google and and even YouTube
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and say, hey, guys, it's like let's we want to share this with with the world, too.
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And we want to invite you to to come in and experience it.
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So Ben, I wanted to ask you, you guys have this incredible roster of artists right now.
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I mean, so you showed us there's an hour and a half long lesson with Garak Olson on Chopin.
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For most people, the only way to get close to him would be to go to one of his concerts
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if he happened to come to your city that you live in.
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And then you've got other huge names like Leon Fleischer, Gary Grafman, Seymour Bernstein.
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How did you guys get started?
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Let me start with the piano platform because the the actual the pilot platform, if you
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will, was is for classical guitar.
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And that was actually right two years before piano.
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And I was hired once the company raised enough funding to expand to help launch the piano
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platform.
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And it came on in the spring of twenty nineteen and the first four to six months of my job
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was almost exclusively trying to recruit artists.
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So for every Garak Olson I got, there were 20 equal artists who didn't respond or said
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no.
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Now, I always treat the door as being open still.
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And actually, some of those artists, including Maniacs, I was able to return to.
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He never said no.
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But what he said was, why me, I'm so he's so modest.
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You know, I don't know what I could offer you that would be useful.
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And then we weren't able to put something together.
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But two years later, when I was able to show him what we did with Garak, what we did with
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Leon Fleischer and others, I mean, I was able to I was just more experienced and was able
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to get somebody of his caliber.
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So it was not easy.
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I mean, it's a lot of emailing and just grunt work of trying to you know, these people get
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asked for stuff all the time.
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You know, they that's why they have agents, you know, and we try to kind of avoid managers
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to some degree, because we're not going to put up the kinds of, you know, fees that Carnegie
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Hall and we're not going to pay them $50,000.
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Of course, we don't have that.
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So it can't be that kind of engagement from our side.
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It's still I think, a very fair price that we're paying, you know, depending on the artist.
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But it's something more that's I think they have to want to do it.
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You know, it can't be the kind of thing where their publicist or their manager says do this,
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because it's going to be good for your public image or something.
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And so with somebody like Garak, I was introduced to him through Nicholas Rosado, who's actually
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the artistic director at 92nd Street Y wonderful organist.
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And he knew Garak from organizing concerts there with him.
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And he set me up with him by email.
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Garak happened to be in New York City when I was spring or the summer of 2019.
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We met at the Nice Metin on 79th and Columbus, I think.
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And he was staying at the hotel above there.
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And we just talked about piano and pianists for like an hour and a half.
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And I was just that I could have like died and you know, quit my job that night, and
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I would have been happy.
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But that was just the beginning of a wonderful collaboration with him that extends to this
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day.
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I still am in touch with him.
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I called him before the Maniacs, you know, session just to be like, tell me about Manny,
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because you've known each other since you were 15.
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And so I'm just so privileged and blessed to be able to have somebody with that caliber
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of a pianist and that magnitude of an intellect to offer his time and services for us and
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be able to share the extraordinary lessons and interviews that he did with us.
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So he was a big help at first, but I also, you know, I went to Juilliard, I have connections,
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I was able to get some professors.
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I know a lot of successful young pianists and I just did a lot of cold emailing too.
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At some point I was like, all right, let's just find every major music school and conservatory
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starting in the United States, but I'm branching out to other countries as well.
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And just going to start sending basically the same version of the same email to everyone
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and that's how I got people like Simone Dinerstein and Rebecca Pennies and some others.
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So that worked too.
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And getting off the ground was the hardest.
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And now that we've launched and established ourselves and people have heard of us, it's
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getting easier, but there's other challenges too, because now we have lots of different
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priorities, lots of initiatives.
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And so recruiting artists is just one of them at this stage, but I'm back at it.
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And Martha Argrich, if you're listening right now, no, but anyway, so yeah, that's just
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that's been a core part of the job and it's not easy at all.
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There's no magic to it.
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It's just hard work.
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Right, right.
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Yeah, that makes sense.
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I mean, as a new podcast, we can certainly sympathize, but it does get easier once you
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have an established body of work to show off.
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And I have to say your production values are incredible.
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I just want to mention that a little bit for anybody who hasn't seen any of ToneBase's
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videos yet.
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They have a lot of samples on YouTube, great stuff.
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Like I'm just the camera angles are so informative.
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You get the over the hands shot of one of these pianists playing as well as the side
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angle and just top audio quality, video quality.
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Really good stuff.
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Plus the score.
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Yes, the score.
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Exactly.
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Yeah, that is very helpful.
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And all of that is part of a workflow with great people and great teammates behind the
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scenes and great contractors that I work with around the states.
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We're not in a position yet that we can fly a production crew anywhere in the world.
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So we have really wonderful collaborators who are videographer and audio crews in different
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parts of the country who we trust and rely on and have just done really great work for
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us.
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But especially my teammates, I wouldn't be able to do any of this without them.
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The scores that you see, the editing that takes place.
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I have my hand in a lot of this or most of it.
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But ever since the beginning, where I actually did try to do absolutely everything along
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with the head of production, Sean Mulholland, we've been able to expand, add more people
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to the team, bring more people on.
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It's really a wonderful group of dedicated musicians and web developers essentially.
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So that brought me to my question, Ben.
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I think sometimes when you keep on thinking about something that this thing would just
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show up.
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So in the beginning of pandemic, when we first started our podcast, and I remember I keep
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on noticing Tone Bass online and online and I registered for this lunch club and all of
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a sudden I was connected with Abbie, I think, on your team.
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And then we were like, oh, wow, Tone Bass.
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And so I told these two guys, I was like, oh my God, this is amazing.
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So he told me a little bit about the behind the scenes.
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But I want to know what is your role as the head of piano?
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Obviously you connect all the artists, but how does it work with the programmers and
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the technology?
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I think it's very innovative because as musicians sometimes we are so used to just hiding the
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practice room and practice, but what you guys are doing are so cool.
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Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, Abbie is a genius.
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I think he's like 24, which means he's one of the founders of Tone Bass.
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So just to give a little bit of a profile of these three, because really this traces
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back to them and what they started, although a lot has developed since then.
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Abbie was the third founder to be added to the sort of triumvirate that began all of
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this.
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But the sort of two original musicians who spawned the idea were Igor Lichman and Chris
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Garwood.
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And they are classical guitarists who met at Yale during their masters studying with
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Ben Verdery.
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And they met in a class taught by a woman named Astrid Baumgarner.
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I don't know if you've heard of her, but she teaches the music and business class at Yale.
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She's a philanthropist, amateur pianist herself, lives in New York City.
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I happened to have given her a lesson once because she still takes lessons.
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Her primary teacher is Peter Dugan, who's now the host of From the Top, wonderful pianist,
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just played with Joshua Bell in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
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Peter's one of my best friends from way back.
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And so when Igor and Chris and Abbie were looking for a pianist to sort of build the
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platform, they reached out to Astrid, among others, and said, hey, who do you know?
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And Astrid said, well, I know Peter Dugan.
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But Peter Dugan's so awesome and busy, like, you know, he's not going to have time to do
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this kind of intense job.
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It's a full-time job.
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It's what I do all the time.
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But I, knowing Peter, was looking for a job.
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I had my doctorate and I was like, let's put this to work.
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Let's apply for the tenure track positions.
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Let's do the whole thing.
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And so it was just good timing.
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It was right in the middle of that season when I was waiting to hear back from the Boston
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University had a job open, University of Maryland, Baltimore County had a job.
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And I'm just like, can I get an assistant professor position somewhere?
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And then I get this email and Peter forwards it from Astrid.
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And I read the tone-based job description for head of piano.
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It just sounded like a joke.
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I was like, there's no such job that exists.
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That's impossible.
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I also happened to be somebody who always loved media and film.
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And like every high school project I had in class, I would, I wouldn't make a poster.
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I would go edit something on iMovie and just have a fun time.
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And I even applied to USC for undergrad because I wanted to do music and film stuff.
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So I always was like, will I ever be able to do something in video media again?
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Because it's one of my passions, like dating back to childhood.
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So I'm just reading this job description.
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It's like, yeah, you need to have at least a master's in piano performance.
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You need to be well connected in the piano world.
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You need to know the piano repertoire.
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You need to have like writing skills and media.
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And I'm just like, these are the five things that I dedicated my life to.
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And so I just, I couldn't believe it because I had no idea what was going to be the next
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chapter in my life.
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I wasn't particularly looking forward to it.
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So I just consider myself extremely lucky that that happened and that I knew people
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like Peter.
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And this is why you make friends at summer camps and stay friends with everybody and
354
00:22:50,960 --> 00:22:55,040
are nice to people, by the way, it helps your life out.
355
00:22:55,040 --> 00:22:56,880
But just that connection really helped.
356
00:22:56,880 --> 00:23:04,040
And so Igor and Chris and Abhi, they met at the school and just very briefly, Igor and
357
00:23:04,040 --> 00:23:11,760
Chris first started a kind of Facebook, I guess, page that was called maybe practice
358
00:23:11,760 --> 00:23:12,760
portal or something.
359
00:23:12,760 --> 00:23:17,980
I don't know the exact history, but the idea there was just let's have great guitarists
360
00:23:17,980 --> 00:23:20,780
film their practice sessions, just like open.
361
00:23:20,780 --> 00:23:26,400
So you have a window in this kind of a, and then they sort of, that was their project
362
00:23:26,400 --> 00:23:27,580
for Astrid's class.
363
00:23:27,580 --> 00:23:32,800
And then that summer, I believe they got involved with the Yale management school who sort of
364
00:23:32,800 --> 00:23:34,280
mentored them a bit.
365
00:23:34,280 --> 00:23:38,860
And that's when they realized, OK, we need a kind of more intentional business model
366
00:23:38,860 --> 00:23:40,960
here and we need to find a programmer.
367
00:23:40,960 --> 00:23:41,960
We need to find a whiz kid.
368
00:23:41,960 --> 00:23:42,960
Right.
369
00:23:42,960 --> 00:23:46,520
That's when they found Abhi, who was an undergrad at the time, you know, a few years younger
370
00:23:46,520 --> 00:23:48,920
than Chris and Igor.
371
00:23:48,920 --> 00:23:54,360
And I mean, he was he could have gone and made instant high salaries, you know, being
372
00:23:54,360 --> 00:23:56,080
a developer for Amazon or wherever.
373
00:23:56,080 --> 00:23:59,120
And he wanted to do something that was his and that.
374
00:23:59,120 --> 00:24:01,640
Yeah, he seemed very passionate to the world.
375
00:24:01,640 --> 00:24:06,200
Yeah, and so just he played piano as a kid, but he leads the product team.
376
00:24:06,200 --> 00:24:08,280
The product team has expanded now.
377
00:24:08,280 --> 00:24:13,160
So we have developers, some of the musicians themselves spread out around the country now
378
00:24:13,160 --> 00:24:19,720
because everything's remote and they're working on the back end all the time just to support
379
00:24:19,720 --> 00:24:27,320
the platform, to encode everything and to just make sure it's a smooth experience for
380
00:24:27,320 --> 00:24:28,440
our users.
381
00:24:28,440 --> 00:24:32,040
And that's that's a really intense job.
382
00:24:32,040 --> 00:24:37,200
And I feel for them because I get to be on podcasts talking to you and talking about
383
00:24:37,200 --> 00:24:41,120
how I interviewed a man who acts or whatever and had coffee with Garrett Olson.
384
00:24:41,120 --> 00:24:45,320
And none of this would even be seen if it weren't for the invisible people behind the
385
00:24:45,320 --> 00:24:51,200
scenes led by Abhi, who are just working constantly to make sure that it's an awesome platform.
386
00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:55,920
So anyway, that's a long winded answer to, I guess, the behind the scenes question, but
387
00:24:55,920 --> 00:25:00,680
happy to dive in more if you're curious about specifics about how these things actually
388
00:25:00,680 --> 00:25:03,080
end up looking the way they look.
389
00:25:03,080 --> 00:25:04,080
Right, right.
390
00:25:04,080 --> 00:25:05,080
Oh my gosh.
391
00:25:05,080 --> 00:25:06,080
Yeah, you keep me going.
392
00:25:06,080 --> 00:25:09,480
I'm more interested in about the technical part.
393
00:25:09,480 --> 00:25:15,720
So you have a team of people who does all the cameras and setting up audios and yeah.
394
00:25:15,720 --> 00:25:17,760
So can you just tell us?
395
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:24,280
So we now do this more and more in-house because finally we were like, hey, let's invest in
396
00:25:24,280 --> 00:25:27,120
our own studio in LA.
397
00:25:27,120 --> 00:25:31,080
And it actually happens to be in Hollywood, although that's just incidental.
398
00:25:31,080 --> 00:25:34,040
It's not like we're in one of these famous studios.
399
00:25:34,040 --> 00:25:35,040
We're not Paramount Pictures.
400
00:25:35,040 --> 00:25:40,200
It just happens to be on Gower Street, a block from the Hollywood Walk of Fame, because we
401
00:25:40,200 --> 00:25:46,040
found a kind of nice space there that we can convert into a recording studio.
402
00:25:46,040 --> 00:25:47,480
So yes, I'm a Hollywood producer.
403
00:25:47,480 --> 00:25:48,480
That's what that means.
404
00:25:48,480 --> 00:25:51,080
But it's not that fancy.
405
00:25:51,080 --> 00:25:54,280
It's just very useful and practical for us.
406
00:25:54,280 --> 00:26:00,400
And so finally in-house, we're able to, with the leadership of Sean Mulholland and other
407
00:26:00,400 --> 00:26:07,920
wonderful editors and videographers on our team, like Phil is somebody I work with all
408
00:26:07,920 --> 00:26:09,680
the time.
409
00:26:09,680 --> 00:26:13,140
These guys are just like, some of them are musicians.
410
00:26:13,140 --> 00:26:17,680
Some of them are coming from the media or the videography world.
411
00:26:17,680 --> 00:26:21,040
And Phil Engel is just an incredible, like he was making music videos.
412
00:26:21,040 --> 00:26:23,200
He was making videos for like Billboard and stuff before this.
413
00:26:23,200 --> 00:26:26,360
And so we brought him in and he's able to share his talents with us.
414
00:26:26,360 --> 00:26:31,040
And Sean was a classical guitarist, but he's always had a sort of tech interest and very
415
00:26:31,040 --> 00:26:38,440
skilled with just being able to set up microphones and just, he's an audiophile and he just gets
416
00:26:38,440 --> 00:26:39,440
this stuff.
417
00:26:39,440 --> 00:26:42,800
And so they've helped design this set.
418
00:26:42,800 --> 00:26:45,240
They helped run our in-house productions.
419
00:26:45,240 --> 00:26:48,360
Now we use Blackmagic cameras, 4K.
420
00:26:48,360 --> 00:26:50,360
And it's not just 4K, by the way.
421
00:26:50,360 --> 00:26:55,920
It's about lighting, it's about a color, it's about recording in a certain kind of flat
422
00:26:55,920 --> 00:26:56,920
color profile.
423
00:26:56,920 --> 00:26:59,680
That's so that when you edit later, you can color correct.
424
00:26:59,680 --> 00:27:00,680
All of that happens.
425
00:27:00,680 --> 00:27:01,840
That's why it looks so good.
426
00:27:01,840 --> 00:27:07,240
So it's not just about, like I saw some ad the other day for a new camera that's 8K and
427
00:27:07,240 --> 00:27:09,280
it says just like film.
428
00:27:09,280 --> 00:27:14,760
If you film at 8K and you have bad lighting and the color profile is off for whatever
429
00:27:14,760 --> 00:27:16,400
reason, it's not going to look good.
430
00:27:16,400 --> 00:27:22,600
It's actually going to look really weird because now it's like 8K and you're seeing very vividly
431
00:27:22,600 --> 00:27:25,080
an image that's very distorted.
432
00:27:25,080 --> 00:27:31,040
So it's an art and a science at the same time to actually make media look this good.
433
00:27:31,040 --> 00:27:37,980
And we're, I'd say we're at, we're second tier to the first tier of HBO and Masterclass.com
434
00:27:37,980 --> 00:27:40,920
and Netflix shows and Amazon shows that you guys watch.
435
00:27:40,920 --> 00:27:42,920
We use some of the same gear.
436
00:27:42,920 --> 00:27:45,520
We have entry level professional equipment.
437
00:27:45,520 --> 00:27:49,580
But what they're doing, it requires much bigger budgets, obviously.
438
00:27:49,580 --> 00:27:51,520
So I'm very proud of what we have made.
439
00:27:51,520 --> 00:27:54,840
I think it looks fantastic, especially for piano lessons.
440
00:27:54,840 --> 00:27:58,400
That's not usually something that you get a cinematic experience for.
441
00:27:58,400 --> 00:28:03,920
So I'm really happy with where we're at, but it's something that I am meticulous about
442
00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:04,920
too.
443
00:28:04,920 --> 00:28:10,280
Like I want things to look as professional as possible and have production values be
444
00:28:10,280 --> 00:28:11,280
as high as possible.
445
00:28:11,280 --> 00:28:17,160
I mean, it's a dream come true for all the artists and pianists, even as a viewer.
446
00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:19,120
It's a really dream come true.
447
00:28:19,120 --> 00:28:20,120
Yeah.
448
00:28:20,120 --> 00:28:23,920
I mean, I think a lot of pianists are used to seeing bums like us in our homes on YouTube.
449
00:28:23,920 --> 00:28:26,280
So I mean, don't sell yourself short.
450
00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:29,160
I think the quality is incredible.
451
00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:30,160
Thank you.
452
00:28:30,160 --> 00:28:32,280
I mean, I, yeah, I mean, I'm used to just iPhone videos too.
453
00:28:32,280 --> 00:28:37,520
Like I didn't, I'm just lucky that I get to work with people who have access to this equipment.
454
00:28:37,520 --> 00:28:43,160
And I should mention Point of Order Productions, led by Christopher and Mary Smith.
455
00:28:43,160 --> 00:28:46,520
They've done all, most of our Northeast stuff.
456
00:28:46,520 --> 00:28:47,520
And guess what?
457
00:28:47,520 --> 00:28:52,160
Most pianists live in either New York or Boston or Baltimore or Philly.
458
00:28:52,160 --> 00:28:55,520
So I've been, you know, between those cities with them, they traveled to the Berkshires
459
00:28:55,520 --> 00:28:57,080
to work with Manny with me.
460
00:28:57,080 --> 00:29:03,800
They have awesome Canon C500s and really state of the art lights.
461
00:29:03,800 --> 00:29:09,600
And Christopher Smith just got a Canon R5, which has a stabilizer.
462
00:29:09,600 --> 00:29:14,280
So he was able to like do all kinds of motion shots with Manny that aren't without a gimbal.
463
00:29:14,280 --> 00:29:19,040
So like, it's actually still stabilized enough to really feel like you're there.
464
00:29:19,040 --> 00:29:24,560
I don't know if you've seen the fly on the wall video productions that are made in London,
465
00:29:24,560 --> 00:29:29,080
but you know, Boris Giltberg and Claire Hoangse have been on them, but you get this feeling
466
00:29:29,080 --> 00:29:32,420
that you're like right next to the pianist playing.
467
00:29:32,420 --> 00:29:36,840
So we're going to have actually some of that with Manny Axe, which is going to be...
468
00:29:36,840 --> 00:29:40,440
I could go watch lots of videos of Axe playing right now on YouTube.
469
00:29:40,440 --> 00:29:45,800
But what I can't do is feel like I'm this close to it and that it's even better than
470
00:29:45,800 --> 00:29:48,220
real life, the picture quality.
471
00:29:48,220 --> 00:29:50,180
So that's, that matters.
472
00:29:50,180 --> 00:29:56,840
You know, it's not directly part of the educational experience, but it certainly enhances it.
473
00:29:56,840 --> 00:29:57,840
It's certainly part of it.
474
00:29:57,840 --> 00:30:01,480
Of course, because you kind of have to have the entertainment quality to it.
475
00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:05,280
I also want to shout out to those students that are watching.
476
00:30:05,280 --> 00:30:10,640
We have all these young students that eventually turn into teenagers and go to college and
477
00:30:10,640 --> 00:30:14,480
they don't know what to do with music if they don't major in music.
478
00:30:14,480 --> 00:30:17,060
These are great examples.
479
00:30:17,060 --> 00:30:23,160
These days we're all like, they're all high tech, growing up from a few years old.
480
00:30:23,160 --> 00:30:28,760
If they can come up with ideas like this, or I think tone bass is a great inspiration
481
00:30:28,760 --> 00:30:32,320
for a younger generation, right, to just brainstorm.
482
00:30:32,320 --> 00:30:33,720
We don't have to be.
483
00:30:33,720 --> 00:30:37,920
And also just, I have to tell you a little secret.
484
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:46,120
I was watching you with Samuel Bernstein last night, again, probably for the fifth time,
485
00:30:46,120 --> 00:30:49,760
and I dropped a little cocktail tear.
486
00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:53,120
I studied with him when I was...
487
00:30:53,120 --> 00:30:57,160
So I moved here from China to Kansas when I was 17.
488
00:30:57,160 --> 00:31:01,600
And then at one point my teacher was like, if you want to go to New York, go study with
489
00:31:01,600 --> 00:31:02,600
Seymour.
490
00:31:02,600 --> 00:31:06,920
And so I remember writing this email to Seymour in the library or something.
491
00:31:06,920 --> 00:31:07,920
And he was like, sure, come.
492
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:12,600
And so I dragged my suitcase, come to New York City from Topeka, Kansas.
493
00:31:12,600 --> 00:31:13,920
And he was just so nice.
494
00:31:13,920 --> 00:31:15,320
It was just so nice to me.
495
00:31:15,320 --> 00:31:16,320
Isn't he amazing?
496
00:31:16,320 --> 00:31:17,320
He was just...
497
00:31:17,320 --> 00:31:21,360
The hand, like you guys were talking about the hand.
498
00:31:21,360 --> 00:31:25,640
And then he was like, Clara, Clara, Clara Schumann also touched this hand.
499
00:31:25,640 --> 00:31:27,360
I was just like, oh my God.
500
00:31:27,360 --> 00:31:29,320
Well, a lot of stories.
501
00:31:29,320 --> 00:31:35,440
Yeah, there's a reason why he was able to impress somebody like Ethan Hawke at a dinner
502
00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:39,880
party so much that Ethan Hawke had to drop everything he was going to do for a year in
503
00:31:39,880 --> 00:31:42,360
order to make a film about this guy.
504
00:31:42,360 --> 00:31:45,160
He's intoxicating, he's hypnotizing.
505
00:31:45,160 --> 00:31:49,120
He'll be all of your friends and he won't want to be all of your teachers.
506
00:31:49,120 --> 00:31:54,560
He's just completely selfless and giving when it comes to his knowledge of piano.
507
00:31:54,560 --> 00:31:58,640
And he's one of the few serious...
508
00:31:58,640 --> 00:32:03,120
I mean, he's actually weirdly not mainstream in the sense that you're not going to see
509
00:32:03,120 --> 00:32:04,120
him...
510
00:32:04,120 --> 00:32:08,280
I mean, he has this incredible biography where he quit performing at 50.
511
00:32:08,280 --> 00:32:13,200
He wasn't exactly trying to rub shoulders with all of the giants of piano and the professors.
512
00:32:13,200 --> 00:32:16,560
In fact, he wrote books very critical of a lot of piano professors.
513
00:32:16,560 --> 00:32:19,000
There's one called, I think, Angels and Monsters.
514
00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:24,800
And there's a whole lot of monsters in the world in the history of piano teaching, which
515
00:32:24,800 --> 00:32:26,440
is a whole topic we could discuss.
516
00:32:26,440 --> 00:32:28,800
But Seymour is not a monster.
517
00:32:28,800 --> 00:32:33,000
He believes in all of his students and he believes in their potential.
518
00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:38,360
And he has, I think, the right philosophy, which is that the job of the teacher is not
519
00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:46,440
to push technique and musicality into a student, but to draw it out of them and to reveal for
520
00:32:46,440 --> 00:32:51,560
them, help them reveal what they already know, which goes back to ancient philosophy.
521
00:32:51,560 --> 00:32:56,080
This is an idea of education that I believe in too, even if I don't always practice it
522
00:32:56,080 --> 00:32:57,080
so successfully.
523
00:32:57,080 --> 00:33:00,880
We're often in positions where we feel like we have to teach it into the student.
524
00:33:00,880 --> 00:33:02,640
It's more so wonderful.
525
00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:07,320
And I hope in that session with me, you kind of see it happening to me.
526
00:33:07,320 --> 00:33:10,320
Oh, for sure.
527
00:33:10,320 --> 00:33:11,440
It's a magic trick.
528
00:33:11,440 --> 00:33:15,040
It's like he doesn't do anything at all.
529
00:33:15,040 --> 00:33:16,520
He doesn't say, that's the moon.
530
00:33:16,520 --> 00:33:18,280
He really does have magic.
531
00:33:18,280 --> 00:33:21,680
He helps you look at the moon and discover it for yourself.
532
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:23,320
It's just he's wonderful.
533
00:33:23,320 --> 00:33:27,800
And he's able to make teaching technique an expressive musical thing, which, of course,
534
00:33:27,800 --> 00:33:29,320
is all of our challenge as a teacher.
535
00:33:29,320 --> 00:33:36,840
How do you make technique into something that's not just athletic training, but at one and
536
00:33:36,840 --> 00:33:43,320
the same time, a human expressive act?
537
00:33:43,320 --> 00:33:48,920
And I think that mission is so important because, of course, we're always so divided between
538
00:33:48,920 --> 00:33:54,160
this false dichotomy of technique and musicianship or musicality, right?
539
00:33:54,160 --> 00:34:00,160
As if you're supposed to work on your technique first and then sprinkle the musical sauce
540
00:34:00,160 --> 00:34:03,440
on afterward rather than baking them in together.
541
00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:05,360
And he always bakes them in together.
542
00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:07,160
His recipe is always both.
543
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:10,880
Well, I think he's also just incredibly kind, right?
544
00:34:10,880 --> 00:34:13,040
I remember just all these things.
545
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:16,320
Did you study with him before you interviewed him?
546
00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:17,640
No, that's what's crazy.
547
00:34:17,640 --> 00:34:19,560
I met him like three days before that.
548
00:34:19,560 --> 00:34:20,560
I see.
549
00:34:20,560 --> 00:34:22,320
And it looks like we've known each other for years.
550
00:34:22,320 --> 00:34:23,320
That's how he treats people.
551
00:34:23,320 --> 00:34:24,960
And he's not just kind.
552
00:34:24,960 --> 00:34:25,960
He's funny.
553
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:26,960
He's funny as hell.
554
00:34:26,960 --> 00:34:27,960
Right, he is.
555
00:34:27,960 --> 00:34:32,440
And the jokes in there, just the deadpan.
556
00:34:32,440 --> 00:34:34,920
Yeah, he's so wonderful.
557
00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:36,520
I can't believe he's 94.
558
00:34:36,520 --> 00:34:39,040
Well, he looks still very young.
559
00:34:39,040 --> 00:34:44,640
You know, my piano tuner, Telly, she's like best friend with him.
560
00:34:44,640 --> 00:34:46,160
So I still get updates from.
561
00:34:46,160 --> 00:34:49,320
I mean, I was actually at the premiere of that movie.
562
00:34:49,320 --> 00:34:52,800
My adult student at the time was the PR.
563
00:34:52,800 --> 00:34:56,480
And I happened to play this concert at Lesztosky and he was there.
564
00:34:56,480 --> 00:35:00,280
And I had a friend and he was like, oh, Claire from Kansas, you're back.
565
00:35:00,280 --> 00:35:01,280
Where are you?
566
00:35:01,280 --> 00:35:04,760
You know, it's like after all these years, he still remembers you.
567
00:35:04,760 --> 00:35:08,960
And that's just like, oh my God, you know, how can that be possible?
568
00:35:08,960 --> 00:35:09,960
Anyway.
569
00:35:09,960 --> 00:35:16,080
This concludes part one of our interview with Ben Lottie.
570
00:35:16,080 --> 00:35:20,680
Tune in next time to learn how ToneBase integrates with traditional lessons and their plans for
571
00:35:20,680 --> 00:35:43,680
expanding in the future.
