The Octomod was funded through word-of-mouth, Twitter, Facebook, and various online forums.

This had the advantage of allowing me to interact with almost everyone who decided to buy a circuit board. I really like the forum method, because I received a lot of valuable feedback and many great suggestions on the designs. On the other hand, these methods forced me to buy the materials up front. I also had to deal with taking orders and collecting money, which can get complicated – making a free, functional storefront through WordPress also seems to be nearly impossible.

For the tabulaRasa, in addition to the social networks and forums, I decided to apply to Kickstarter.

Kickstarter is a way to raise funds for a project, by allowing people to commit a certain amount of money in exchange for a “reward” if the full funding amount is met. If full funding isn’t reached, no money exchanges hands. This has two advantages – 1) the project owner doesn’t have to invest money in the project upfront (although I did, and I’m sure many others do as well), and 2) the people who are funding only end up paying if the project is fully funded.

A couple of things I’ve learned after the Kickstarter experience:

I’m not sure that the video Kickstarter requires really made a difference in my case – but it can’t hurt.

Make sure to set a good financial goal – not too high and not too low.

Likewise, I realized I allowed for too many different funding tiers – this complicated things when it came time to provide the rewards. In the future, I’d go with only 3 or 4 funding levels, and minimize the number of different reward types.

You definitely want to be responsive to questions and comments – both on Kickstarter and on email.

Also, I found it important to remain flexible and willing to change the project. The music I make with my electronics doesn’t require a volt per octave tuning scale, so I designed the tabulaRasa without any sort of calibrated tuning. Many people contacted me asking about v/octave capabilities, so I spent some time doing the math and implementing a tuning algorithm. I made a video demonstrating it working, and had a bunch of people kick-in funding.

The last step of the process was ordering and assembling the boards, which I’ll cover in the next post.

The new USB-Octomod Software GUI.

The USB-Octomod software now supports MIDI input. Using MIDI controller numbers 20 – 27, you can convert MIDI to control voltage. The new version is a free download here.

Recordings were made on a Tascam DR-07, with just a tiny bit of EQ after the fact.

KSE-10-30-2009 One

KSE-10-30-2009 Two

I’ve had almost 1,500 downloads of “Solid State” alone, according to Archive.org. (Who knows, that number may be higher in reality… these are both Creative Commons licensed works, so copying and sharing is encourage.) I cannot think of a better way for a young, independent composer to gain a bit of exposure. Petcord also run a streaming internet radio station, Leftob, so anything they release (or anything else they find and enjoy) is given some play on the station. It’s a great way to get your music out to some new listeners, who might be tuning in because of another artists work that they enjoy.

It can be difficult, but it’s important to find a netlabel who has released similar music to yours. Petcord’s previous releases were not necessarily focused on the same things as mine, but Olliver, one of the operators, was quite interested and totally positive about putting my music out.

As you can see in some posts below, my releases have literally gotten global attention, from Hungary, to Estonia, and Duke University.

I’m thinking next about some netlabel-specific music releases, possibly consisting of a piece of software rather than a recording. More here when that happens.

Looks pretty good, and the syntax isn’t too hard either. Anyway, this is some of the flute part.

Some images from a piece I’ve just finished, currently untitled.

The location of the circle(s) indicates an event which the player should listen for before beginning their next gesture. The beginning of the next gesture should correspond as closely as possible with the ending of the previous, listened-for, gesture. Circle placement is read as follows: the placement left to right inside the box indicates duration of the event, left being a short event, right being a long event. Bottom to top indicates pitch, low to high. For example, a circle in the bottom left corner of a box indicates a short, low event, and a circle in the upper right corner indicates a high, long event.

“Inevitably, there will come a situation in which all three performers are waiting for events which will not occur. This is the desired outcome of the piece, and should not be avoided or overcome through creative misinterpretation of heard events or environmental sounds. When this point is reached, the performers should continue sounding their current events until it is certain that the piece can progress no further, at least 30 seconds.”