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Cat's out of the bag here, commencing a potential thread hijacking:

I have been speaking with Solarbear, Mikeeteevee, Freque, and AndaruGO about a physical "patchbooklet" that is a little printed booklet that is 128 pages with a glossy laminated cardboard cover. The booklet would be just small enough to fit inside a GB cart case (the clear kind) that is found on many of the shops. 128 pages, half filled with presets, half of the pages left blank with instrument templates you can fill in.

The books would cost pennies on the dollar to produce (about $300 + shipping for 2,000 books), and the time to get them printed and shipped would be about 1 month. All I need is patches to put in the first 60 or so pages. I'm willing to dig into my own pockets and sell these at a reasonable price (less than $4 before shipping) assuming a test batch is good quality.

The appeal of these books would be: portability, independence from the web (allowing for multiple edditions and collectibility), the ability to personalize the book (doodles, notes, custom instruments, etc), and the feasibility of people using these to trade patches at stuff like Blip. I am well aware that some save swapping and patch sharing happens, and it would be neat to see some sort of physical medium we could carry this "data" in.

If you are interested in helping out with this, PM me, this is going to be my new big endeavor after BRKfest aside from another hardware project.

Feel free to blast/criticize/demoralize my idea, or improve upon it.

danimal cannon wrote:

Touring is essentially a huge depressing money pit unless you do it extremely right.  Unless you're drawing people into shows like Anamanaguchi (you aren't), you're not going to survive unless you're an opener for a bigger draw.

My last tour had VERY FEW chip scene people show up, like 3 or less.  And one of them was paid to be there.  I realize the ticket prices weren't exactly $5 and some people were going to see me play at blip a week later, but holy crap that should be your wake up call to how many people might actually show up to these things.

this is probably the truth for a majority of artists, and there are a number of reasons why. One is that honestly, I think the days when new artists could survive on tour without heavy marketing or a huge following are basically over: at this point, media consumption is done mostly online, until there becomes a social element (girls, friends, cred, etc) to it. I cant tell you how many bands/artists that I thought were HUGE (online) I have seen play in *Boston* for 20-30 people, never mind whatever small-town turnouts might be.

However, we have done some (very?) successful shows in areas without an established show series via one very simple technique: introduce a social element. The reason people buy tickets to Blip isn't just to see acts, its to hang out with all their online friends and reinforce "chiptune culture". They are buying themselves into a scene. Our most successful shows have been along the same lines. Its not about "omg I am touring pay me", its "we are bringing the chiptune party to you and your friends". We find out where local peeps want to go venue-wise, we have local chip talent featured / an open mic for n00bz, we get local modders or chip/related merch vendor types involved AND we well publicize it with local media.

People will GLADY pay money to come out for an event that reinforces and enhances their social niche. Hell, I would, and do. From my perspective, thats the exact reason that videogame bands like Protomen and Powerglove are as successful as they are (or abstracted slightly further, any popular band really): people are going out to see and hang out with other people in their tribe.

So perhaps take that into consideration for future touring events (not you specifically dan, im talking everybody chip here). Its a bit more complicated, but not really THAT bad, and in the end is considerably better for everybody: artists, fans and "scene".