Winter Approaches: One Year Update
Vancouver Wind Storm
With winter around the corner (as marked by the non-consensual exfoliation I got from the beach during an intense wind storm the other day), I figure it’s a good time to reflect on how the past year has gone with all this 8-string stuff. Last month marked the one year anniversary since beginning my journey as Eight Metal Strings - my business-based attempt at populating the internet with 8-string-specific learning materials and lesson videos. While It was a slow start with a few growing pains, I am ecstatic with how it’s currently going.
Despite the current online landscape and constant pressure to monetize every aspect of your business, I am still managing to maintain my idealistic intentions to create an “old internet” vibe and provide as much as I can for free. While I have recently started a Patreon where people can pay to connect more frequently and directly with me (and receive bonus content), I still want to provide essential learning materials for free. I grew up when the internet was becoming more common in the average person’s house and it was still new and exciting, full of potential, and largely unrestricted (for better and worse); but I was a couple of years too young to engage with it in a meaningful way and spent most of my online time playing flash games after school. Over the years though, as I spoke with people who were just a few years my elder, I learned of the early potential and hope that came with the internet and subsequently developed a bit of a nostalgia for it,: a time when people would share information for free simply to enrich others and contribute to the minds of those on the same forums. Since then, the tools have changed (fewer forums and more YouTube, Squarespace, Mailchimp, Patreon, subscription services, other social media I avoid like the plague…), but my intention is still to create the same inclusive and sharing atmosphere that people say was present in the old internet by removing barriers for people to learn on their own.
As for what comes next for Eight Metal Strings, I am desperately trying to get all the social media pieces in set and find a balanced and consistent schedule with posting (Website, Patreon, YouTube, & Buy Me A Coffee). Who ever said social media wasn’t work? In and amongst this, I am perpetually trying to get enough practice time in - both for my own interests and for video lesson content - as well as fit in all the normal mundane tasks that life requires. Do I need more breaks? Probably. Yes. But I am enjoying the work I am able to do now and even more so, the community that is building around it. Whether from the YouTube comments, the Patreon chats, the monthly online meet-ups, or the private lessons, it has been so fulfilling and touching to hear from people around the world, learn a bit about their stories, and to find out that what I am doing, in some small way, is meaningful to them.
As we go head into Winter, and into perhaps a difficult few years (for my friends to the south), I look forward to the new connections that will be made and nurturing the ones that are already established and to creating a space where we can just nerd out about learning the 8-string guitar.
(By the way, this Saturday we are having our 5th monthly online meetup. Sign up here if you want to come hang.)