New phase of MIDI IN

 I started this blog at the same time as the midi_in Youtube channel, for people who prefer text and pictures (long live the traditional blog). That was May 2022, about the time I started developing MIDISID. 

Youtube works so well for discovery so I haven't always kept this blog up-to-date. Plus I have confused myself with other similar blogs with an overlap such as New Stuff for Old Stuff.  

However. I've taken a big step this week. In one word, reinvention. In more words, for various reasons I need to find a new plan for my work and income.

I've spoken it all to a camera and that's embedded below. Below that is the transcript in case you prefer to read rather than listen. 




The new Patreon page is at patreon.com/midi_in

Transcript:

Hello, I'm Shiela 

I enjoy making musical instrument ideas a reality. I like solving problems, I get excited by developing things from scratch.

I'm not claiming that my ideas are always new. For example MIDISID wasn't the first or only modern device that drives a couple of SID chips, but I think that it does it well, and I made it available and reasonably-priced when other options weren't. 

Theremin-like instruments exist. But I wasn't aware of anything else using LIDAR ToF sensors, which seemed to me to be particularly well-suited for this job. I chose those over ultrasonic and visible light, and an accurate and consistent distance measurement has advantages over the very sensitive capacitive functionality of a traditional theremin. 

Capacitive-touch is used a lot today, but velocity-sensitivity is difficult to achieve with such pads, I can tell you, but It's that kind of thing that I've spent a lot of time on and still like to try and improve.

I also enjoy making music and feel that I'm getting better at doing that. I like building other people's open-source things. (haxophone and noisferatu) And trying crazy ideas that are fun but may well not become a product

I've tried to earn a living from all of this over the last few years. And at times I've even kept my head above the water...

The parts that have been most popular haven't necessarily been the same parts that earn me money. The times when I have earned a bit of money have been the product launches. Hold that thought.

Basing my income on having a shop stocked with well-established and well-developed products isn't a sustainable thing, I now know, because of product lifespan and that model is now also threatened by increasing regulations and costs when sending to certain countries. I can't survive by selling to  the UK only.

All of this calls for a certain amount of reinvention

So I've sketched out a new business model. To the casual observer, my activities won't look very different. In fact, the changes will hopefully enable me to to continue doing what I've been doing and love doing. 

I won't stop supporting, developing or selling existing things. But the focus has to be on the new, a pipeline of crazy new ideas and projects, (hold the new thing) which is great because that's the part that I enjoy the most. 

I need to be more open with the development. Early on, these videos were my most popular, certainly more so than my music, but I had to hold off on being open about new ideas and prototyping because I found launches to be more successful if I keet things under wraps until the big reveal. 

So that's where Patreon comes in. It'll allow me to build a community of people who want to be in on the new things, and be invovled - to feed back, comment and contribute in other ways. I've long wanted to have a place to share the music made by other people with the instruments I've made. I'll be able to share new ideas and development with those who are interested and literally want to buy into that, while still revealing something new to the public when it's ready. 

There'll be a free tier, for things like the monthly newsletter, and updates to existing things. There'll be tiers with a small barrier to entry for the 'behind the scenes' stuff and other tiers for people to make a larger contribution and support aspects of my work if that's what they want to do. 

I'm sure that there are other possibilities too - opporutnities that I haven't yet thought of. What would you like this new phase of MIDI IN to look like?

Thanks for listening this far, and see you on the inside.

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