The music practice app Tonara has been begging for my attention for months. I was going to make a point of checking it out at last year’s MTNA conference in March 2019. In the fall, both Lou Ann Yackley Pope and Nicole Douglas shared their valuable time and walked me through the app. Their enthusiasm and my good intentions failed to persuade. I have a system with lessons notes on Google Sheets and it works quite well. Students and parents seem to follow my instructions for the week fairly consistently and communication lines remain open.

Why fix what’s not broken?

In late fall, our son Carter’s accident in Florida plunged life into a realm far beyond piano teaching. While my husband and I stayed by Carter’s side in West Palm Beach, I thought I’d refresh my February re-entry into lessons with Tonara. I began loading students names and info between trips to the hospital. I assumed that I could dive in and have it prepped and ready for my teaching back in Colorado. My “hospital brain'“ banished my good intentions. I just didn’t have the bandwidth to commit.

Then COVID-19 decimated reality. While good friend Samantha Coates of Rote Repertoire and I shared Zoom time to explore screen sharing and annotation tools for our upcoming switch to online lessons, she told me she liked Tonara. Sam sensed that Tonara would prove valuable as she moved to virtual lessons.

Apparently, it took three events to get me to pay attention to Tonara:

a pandemic
a limitation to online lessons
a friend seeing value in the app and wondering why I hadn’t started using it yet.

My hesitation to commit has a name: approach avoidance.

Approach-avoidance conflict occurs when an individual is faced with a decision to pursue or avoid something that has advantages and disadvantages. The conflict causes stress as you go back and forth trying to make a decision.

I thought I had a strong case for avoiding Tonara.

My assignment system was in place, why change things up now?
It would be SO much work to make the switch.
My student families would not be onboard with one more thing to download and manage.

So, you may be wondering why I clutter your precious time with paragraphs on why I avoided Tonara?

I want you to understand the depth of my resistance. Perhaps you’ve had similar feelings or approach avoidance with Tonara? or online lessons? a new app?

Now I want you to understand the height of my appreciation. Tonara is worth the effort. After all my doubts, I’m all in. Read on to see if you may be, too.

First, read why good friend and colleague Marie Lee, author of Group Teaching Blue Print is head-over-heels with the app. She shares her favorite features of Tonara which are mine, too. Learn how she values Tonara as a teacher of group lessons, too.

Thoughts on Tonara from Marie

On Sunday evening, March 15th, we got the notice from our governor that businesses and schools were to be closed. I had 12 hours to get an organized plan out to my 120 students to move our piano classes online. Tonara allowed me to do just that! They offer an exciting framework for students, ease of administration for teachers, and reassuring format for parents.

Here’s what I love!

EVERYTHING is in one place! So easy for students and parents to know to always go to their Tonara account rather than have to check email, text, or Facebook messages.
Extremely affordable for everything it offers. The cost could easily be divided and added to yearly student book fees so the teacher doesn’t have to absorb the cost.
Available on tablets and phones. I’m seeing that iOS devices have much less technical troubles than Android.
Very responsive and helpful Facebook Tonara Focus group. Currently, this is one of my top Facebook groups. You can post technical issues, ideas, questions and get a quick, friendly response from technical support or more experienced teachers.
Intuitive for students to jump right in and use with very little help.
Quickly and easily upload PDFs of sheet music, recordings, video links (YouTube or teacher-created videos.)
Motivating point system for students. They love checking the leaderboard!
Store your media (PDFs, videos, audio recordings) for future lessons
Streamline your lesson planning process: Create a lesson, then copy and recreate for another lesson.
Embed your Zoom meeting link in Tonara and it sends a reminder 30 minutes before each lesson to your students.
Compare recording feature for students.
Cute stickers to send to students.
My students are grouped according to their class times and they can send messages, stickers, and challenges to each other within the class chat box.

Tonara is a huge retention tool and has literally saved my studio during Covid by providing a professional-looking, structured framework for our students which allows parents to be more connected and invested in their students’ musical education.

I’m their #1 fan!

Stories about Tonara from Leila

Here are some examples of how Tonara changed up my teaching life.

This morning I had about ten messages in the Tonara notifications in the chat area. Most of them were audio recordings that students sent me for feedback before they record a video for our virtual recital next week. One recording was Siena’s lovely performance of “Celtic Dream” as birds outside her window chirped along with her. It was a small moment of bliss. Those don’t come around all the much right now. I take them when I can get them.

Ethan texted a question in the chat about how to complete an assignment and I replied with a few extra instructions and he carried on.

Hadassah needed a new piece so I played and recorded a number of audio files in the chat for her to listen to and select. Students usually “go shopping” for a piece like this during lessons. Now she can listen at home and take her time deciding. The best thing about Tonara is that those audio files I recorded for Hadassah can easily be loaded into my permanent media library. I’m building a large folder of repertoire recordings that I can share with any students and also attach to future assignments.

As off-bench assignments must now be completed at home during quarantine, I create assignments in Tonara that feature links to the Get Inspired Episodes or podcasts or YouTube videos along with worksheets and instructions. Once these assignments are made, I can share them with any or all students within seconds.

I sent reminders to my studio about crazy hat or silly hair week through the chat in Tonara and many of them showed up all decked out.

Naomi is playing Glenda Austin’s Jazz Prelude No 2 but sometimes the sound in Zoom is well, you know, NOT GOOD. So as she works towards her virtual recital videos, she sends me audio recordings of the current status of the piece. I listen with the score and make notes before her Zoom lesson. Then we address the lovely improvements and the trouble spots during the lesson.

When students first logged in to Tonara, I told them that I expected them to send me at least one audio recording of an assigned piece each week and I would give feedback. It didn’t take long for most of them to check out more features of the app including the practice tracker and the leader board. Now many are competing to be the top scorer. Just checked and Ethan passed up Kevin and Jian—two adult students—who are all over the features of Tonara.

Kevin—the adult student mentioned above— was unsure of scale fingering rules during his lesson and so I ended up creating a lesson assignment called Major Scales in Tonara in which I include a video of how to finger scales that I created in an app called Loom. I could make this video in Tonara, too but Loom is SO quick and easy to use with the camera currently suspended over my keyboard. Within seconds, Loom records a video AND automatically makes a link for the video that I can then share in the Tonara assignment.

Next, I quickly revised my scale fingering PDF that I gave away a while back at the blog because Kevin was confused by it. I agreed that it could have been better. This fresh PDF is now attached to this Major Scale assignment in Tonara. It’s saved in what Tonara calls “Repertoire” and now when any students begin scales, I can share this assignment without making a new one.

If you want to see my complete assignment, make sure to check Friday’s newsletter. Sign up for the bingo card below so you don’t miss the newsletter.

To be honest, I’m giddy and almost overwhelmed with the potential of Tonara. I can’t stop dreaming of ways to put Tonara to work for me so right now my days are long as I innovate. I’m burning up the midnight oil to fuel a rocket full of comprehensive and multimedia assignments that can be launched and remain in orbit with little future work. The effort now will pay off later.

As much as I’d like to sign off with a warm, fuzzy ending, like all tech tools, Tonara has a few glitches. I could list them here but by the time you read this, the Tonrara developers may have already fixed at least some of them. If you want to know more, start with a free trial and join the Tonara Focus group in Facebook.

The fact that humans, innovative software, group chats and practice score boards with point systems are part of the app make it prone to disfunction and frustration. So buyer beware, the complexity of Tonara comes with flaws. In the digital world patience is key as most flaws can and will be fixed.

Kinda like crazy hat week, may do that one again.

No, Marie and I were not paid to write this article. Every word comes from the heart.

Learn more about Tonara and get a free 30-day trial for 20% off with coupon code viss20 here.

All the best to you during the pandemic as you reinvent within restrictions, learn within limitations and blossom within boundaries.

-Leila

Is Tonara worth the effort?

Thoughts on Tonara from Marie

Stories about Tonara from Leila

@leilaviss