Sep 7, 2023

Opinions expressed by Digital Journal contributors are their own. Forte is a platform for live, online music lessons backed by some big names in the tech world, including Ben Ling’s Bling Capital, Max and Nellie Levchin’s SciFi VC, and BDMI, the venture capital arm of media giant Bertelsmann. We meet with Hunter McGranahan, Chief Product Officer of Forte, to discuss their disruptive technology. Hunter McGranahan, Forte’s charismatic thirty-year-old CPO, has a strong tech pedigree. He launched the first of its kind VR department at Creative Artists Agency. Then, at start-up Magic Leap, he pioneered a radical new technology for music education using augmented reality. He is now applying those skills to pioneer Forte’s technology, shaking up the world of music teaching today. Let’s begin with some basics here. When a client signs up to Forte, are they getting hardware? No, Forte is a way for students to find great music teachers and then take lessons with them on our video-calling software platform. There may be some elements of hardware we would recommend such as headphones, but the platform can run effectively with the microphone and speakers already built-in to their computer. These have progressed enormously in the last few years in terms of quality. There is no need for extra hardware. What we have done is significantly upgrade the quality of the audio that is delivered through that existing hardware. Why? All existing video conferencing platforms are orientated around the spoken human voice only. So they’re tweaked to suppress background noise and only capture dialogue from the person speaking. They work best when each person in a conversation waits until the other has finished. It’s hard to speak at the same time or offer verbal cues while someone is speaking, which is one of the main factors behind ‘Zoom fatigue.’ As such they may be ideal for a business presentation, but they have significant drawbacks when it comes to music instruction. To create the audio necessary for that, we had to go under the hood and tweak all of the possible knobs. How exactly have you done that? When it comes to high performance audio, there are different aspects we can optimize. We paid close attention not just to the amount of audio data we deliver from user to user, but also the quality of that data – the nuance of the sound. We have worked closely with the best music teachers in the industry to create an audio system that can detect every slight nuance they need when teaching an instrument. This began in February 2021, with teachers from the Curtis Institute giving lessons to students on the other side of the country. We learned an awful lot from this first real-world exercise and were able to create a pilot version. Then in the summer of 2021 we moved on to a second pilot where over a period of six weeks we worked with teachers from the Royal College of Music in London teaching pupils on the other side of the world. What we learned from that pilot enabled us to launch a second, enhanced, version. We call the resulting proprietary technology ‘Forte Pure Audio.’ It allows the most human and expressive aspects of music making, like tone color, dynamics, and articulation, to be fully audible to teachers and students alike. Forte replicates a live music lesson but brings some other visual advantages which relate to video conferencing. What are the visual advantages? An important advantage is that we have made it super easy to use a mobile phone as a second simultaneous camera. This might mean, as well as the main interaction between teacher and pupil, each show close-ups of how their hands are moving on the instrument. The teacher can show the pupil exact finger placement or how to use their feet. What are the other advantages from the pupil’s point of view? We are opening up access to high quality music lessons on a global scale. Wherever you live, you can have access through Forte to the very best teachers in the world. We have exclusive partnerships with The Grammys, the Royal College of Music, and the Aspen Music Festival and School. All three have verified teachers on Forte. Essentially, we have created a sophisticated matching platform that enables a real time marketplace for music instruction. From the pupil’s or parent’s point of view, rather than scrolling through hundreds of teachers where it is impossible to differentiate between one and another, we have created a service that ensures the customer can get exactly the kind of teacher they want. Forte enables pupils and teachers to be categorised in six different ways. Instrument, age, skill level, ability to read music, aspiration, and genre of music. We also offer the ability to record a lesson which gives parents peace of mind and a way to be more engaged in their child’s learning. And for the teachers? Teachers can set up their own studio online, indicating exactly what they are able to offer, when they want to teach, and what kind of students they want. The very effective payment system which we have created is also a clear attraction. The system automatically charges their credit card when a lesson happens. There is no need for teachers to be constantly chasing up unpaid lesson fees. Teachers customize their own cancellation policy which again is automatically handled by the platform. How do you anticipate the technology evolving in the future? Forte will offer users a one-stop shop for everything they need to learn an instrument, like instrument rental or buying sheet music. There are also opportunities to have more peer-to-peer learning, recitals, practice enhancement tools, and asynchronous learning experiences. Our core belief is that anyone can learn to play a musical instrument if they believe in themselves. They just need access to more great teachers, help choosing one who will be a great fit, and a better way to connect with that teacher for the lessons. We are enabling all three on a global scale. The old model – only choosing from music teachers who happen to live nearby, whether they are a good fit for you or not – is outdated and doesn’t serve families well. We want to radically improve how families around the world find and connect with music teachers.