Michael is creating
High-Quality Music Lessons
Breaking musical concepts down into the bits that matter.
22
$131
Milestone Goals
Real Equipment
I get to buy some actual recording gear. Right now I record with my iPhone and a $30 webcam. My lights are adhesive LED strips that I've stuck to the walls and computer monitors on my desk. It would be oh-so-nice to invest in some real equipment.
Lesson Day
One day a week I stop working my day job and work 100% on creating new content. At the moment I have to cram things into whatever spare hours I can get after work or on the weekends, but with a solid day every week I can create lessons consistently and give them my full focus.
Full Course
I start working on a full, college-level course on music theory, or music history, or piano proficiency, or whatever you guys decide you want. Same kind of thing you'd get if you went to college and took a course.
Mystery Project
Learning by watching lectures is kind of terrible. I mean it's what we've got, and it works, but wouldn't it be so much better to learn interactively? I'm a software developer as well as a musician, and while I can't reach through the camera and help you one-on-one, I can build an app, or a website, or whatever best serves your needs and helps you learn in a hands-on, interactive, feedback-intensive way.
Location
Portland, OR, USA
Top PatronsSee all 22
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Hey Guys! Thanks for checking out my Patreon page. Here's some stuff about my YouTube channel, where things are going, and why this campaign is here in the first place.
Where It All Started:
About 5 years ago I thought "Hey, I bet if I bolted a camera to my ceiling fan and clamped a whiteboard to my piano, I could probably sort of do some lessons on music theory". Turns out people really like learning about how music works, and a couple millions views later; here we are.
Where It's At Now:
Since the channel started, I've managed to put together 22 different lessons about chord structures, rhythm, keys, harmony, modes, and all kinds of other fun stuff. The channel has grown tremendously. In fact monthly views have tripled in the past 6 months. But... 22. Considering how broad and far reaching the topic of music theory is, that really isn't much. I have almost 50 different video ideas on the waiting list, and some of them are things like "do a multi-part series on writing counterpoint" or "start a course on how to read sheet music". And that's without even considering videos on how to actually *play* piano, or guitar, or how to deal with performance anxiety, or whatever else. There are quite literally hundreds of different lessons that I'd like to do and entire subject areas I want to explore.
The Problem:
These videos take a lot of time. Time is finite. And when you work 40 hours a week, time is really, super extra finite. Setup, filming, editing, and uploading take quite a while, but the real issue is that I spend days thinking about a topic, reading questions and ideas from you guys, and wrestling with everything until it congeals into a cohesive lesson. So as long as I'm stuck with just nights and weekends, the bandwidth for new material is pretty low.
Here's the cool part though; I work freelance. So as long as I can still pay rent, cutting down work hours to work on more material is no problem. So if there were another source of income....
The Bad Solution:
I regularly get offers for sponsorships and advertising deals. But pitching a product during one of my videos or "reviewing" a product because someone paid me just isn't a direction I want to take. And of course I could always make a set of DVDs and try to sell them to you, but what is this, 1995? I don't even own a DVD player. And that's dumb anyway.
The Good Solution:
So far, Patreon is the only thing that makes sense to me. People who want to and can afford it can help fund the new videos, everything is still freely available (not locked away under a paywall or on some silly DVD set), and I'm not stuck getting paid for pretending to like a product. I can make videos, you can give me feedback and help decide what I do next, and there's no third party to mess with our business.
How You Can Help:
If you want, and you can afford it, you can help me out with a monthly pledge. If you can't afford it or just aren't up for that, no problem! Hit the like button a couple times, learn a bit about music theory, tell me what you think and we'll call it even :)
...3D Printed Music Dice? What even is that?
If you looked at the rewards you might be wondering that the heck a "3D printed musical dice" is. So it turns out that when you're practicing something, like a chord progression, a scale or even just learning new chords, it's important to practice them in random keys. So I designed a 12 sided dice that has a different musical key on each face, as well as a 4 sided dice with basic chords qualities (major, minor, diminished, augmented), and a 6 sided dice with the different 7th chord qualities. I'll print you one (or all 3, depending on reward level) and mail it to you.
Thanks guys.
-Mike
Where It All Started:
About 5 years ago I thought "Hey, I bet if I bolted a camera to my ceiling fan and clamped a whiteboard to my piano, I could probably sort of do some lessons on music theory". Turns out people really like learning about how music works, and a couple millions views later; here we are.
Where It's At Now:
Since the channel started, I've managed to put together 22 different lessons about chord structures, rhythm, keys, harmony, modes, and all kinds of other fun stuff. The channel has grown tremendously. In fact monthly views have tripled in the past 6 months. But... 22. Considering how broad and far reaching the topic of music theory is, that really isn't much. I have almost 50 different video ideas on the waiting list, and some of them are things like "do a multi-part series on writing counterpoint" or "start a course on how to read sheet music". And that's without even considering videos on how to actually *play* piano, or guitar, or how to deal with performance anxiety, or whatever else. There are quite literally hundreds of different lessons that I'd like to do and entire subject areas I want to explore.
The Problem:
These videos take a lot of time. Time is finite. And when you work 40 hours a week, time is really, super extra finite. Setup, filming, editing, and uploading take quite a while, but the real issue is that I spend days thinking about a topic, reading questions and ideas from you guys, and wrestling with everything until it congeals into a cohesive lesson. So as long as I'm stuck with just nights and weekends, the bandwidth for new material is pretty low.
Here's the cool part though; I work freelance. So as long as I can still pay rent, cutting down work hours to work on more material is no problem. So if there were another source of income....
The Bad Solution:
I regularly get offers for sponsorships and advertising deals. But pitching a product during one of my videos or "reviewing" a product because someone paid me just isn't a direction I want to take. And of course I could always make a set of DVDs and try to sell them to you, but what is this, 1995? I don't even own a DVD player. And that's dumb anyway.
The Good Solution:
So far, Patreon is the only thing that makes sense to me. People who want to and can afford it can help fund the new videos, everything is still freely available (not locked away under a paywall or on some silly DVD set), and I'm not stuck getting paid for pretending to like a product. I can make videos, you can give me feedback and help decide what I do next, and there's no third party to mess with our business.
How You Can Help:
If you want, and you can afford it, you can help me out with a monthly pledge. If you can't afford it or just aren't up for that, no problem! Hit the like button a couple times, learn a bit about music theory, tell me what you think and we'll call it even :)
...3D Printed Music Dice? What even is that?
If you looked at the rewards you might be wondering that the heck a "3D printed musical dice" is. So it turns out that when you're practicing something, like a chord progression, a scale or even just learning new chords, it's important to practice them in random keys. So I designed a 12 sided dice that has a different musical key on each face, as well as a 4 sided dice with basic chords qualities (major, minor, diminished, augmented), and a 6 sided dice with the different 7th chord qualities. I'll print you one (or all 3, depending on reward level) and mail it to you.
Thanks guys.
-Mike