Good Yule and big love! (Patreon)

Hello hello! Merryyyyyyy DivMaaaaaas! 

Merry Christmas everyone and to those who don't celebrate I wish you and equally great end to the year and well wishes for the new one ahead. First of all thank you for all your support, whoever you are and however you support what we're doing here from the most casual to the most avid viewer. 

(short version) If your about to open your pressies or delve into a plate of something nice have a good one and a happy new year. 

But if you've time to reflect and look forward strap in! Grab yourself a brew or tipple and a tasty treat and get your feet up for a little run down of 2022 as I think back across the year and look ahead to the one to come.

Thank you!

First of all I'd like to thank you all for your support (again, I did that above, but you're so good you get a double-thanks). To everyone that watched, commented, liked or shared anything I've been up to we can't thank you enough for that support. Of course extra thanks goes out to people supporting through here (Patreon) as your extra investment really has fuelled and enriched everything we've been doing here.

A tough year ... 

This year has been an incredibly tough year for the industry. We've seen both big and small companies disappear which has been deeply saddening. It's a huge loss for us all and I'm sure all of you would join me in wishing anyone affected well for the future. 

Component shortages have been a major factor in all of this and that affects everyone, not just those forced to close up for good. There's some signs this will be better next year and also plenty of things that won't be any better, not for a long time yet. This is of course affecting every area of technology, not just music tech or modular and has come from Covid-19 issues, factory fires, floods, droughts and a whole combination of factors. 

But it's also been an exciting year with many great new modules and new companies popping up bringing new ideas to the table. It's been a pleasure to work with a range of both established companies and new ones this year to demonstrate their new products while pushing the angle of education and a deeper learning of sound through patching.

I'm excited for what the following year brings, there's plenty of new modules in the works and I'm looking forward to working with many of them for future videos.

A look back at the "best" of 2022

I'm looking forward to working on my end of year "best of" video through the holiday period. You may have seen I was asking you to vote for your best modules of the year and most impactful (so released in 2022, and not released in 2022). 

I also have some sales info and plenty of stats for a full on modular-stats-fest (yay stats, said few of you in the background!) of a video to come. 

The DivKid Community!

The community side of everything I'm doing has grown amazingly this year and continues to be a constant source of motivation and inspiration. 

Little things like having our QOTDs (question of the day) give great insight to a community with differing and wide ranging experience levels, different backgrounds, tastes and styles. With even the slightly sillier and less technical questions leading to an interesting read.

Featured Systems has been a recent fantastic addition to the community. Providing a platform to highlight a community members system (be it a small case or whole studio set up) and to then keep that in focus for a week to discuss. These conversations are hugely valuable, for the people featured and for everyone asking questions. There's so much to learn from each other and the openness to share and engage is fantastic!

Now if you're wondering where all of this is we run the DivKid community through our exclusive Discord server. I'm in there daily (usually multiple times) and plenty of others are very active too. It's grown into a place to share as much as people like across various channels, to talking off topic and support each other through more difficult or wonderful (non modular or music) times too. It's been lovely to get to know people beyond what modules they use and noises they make ... but of course we all love the modular and music making chat, of which there's plenty!

If you'd like to gain access to the DivKid community you'll need to support here on Patreon (for as little as $1 a month) to gain access, where as the $5 tier opens up exclusive videos, PDF patch books and more ...  any questions just ask me. 

Looking forward

Thinking of the year ahead my head is full of ideas, not just for more new module demos (though they'll plenty of that) but ideas for other videos I'd like to finally get to, some ideas I'd like to revisit and also ideas for new modules too (more on that below).

But I'd like to take the opportunity to ask - What would you like to see from me in 2023? Has there been something (or glimpse of something) you'd like to see more of? Is there a format, video type, bit of gear, or idea you'd like to see me explore? Let me know, I keep notes and refer back to them regularly and I definitely aim to expand out a bit this coming year. 

DivKid Modules

Stereo Strip was my 2022 module release and working with Befaco again has been a total pleasure. That little (6HP) module offering stereo VCA, stereo VC panning, stereo EQ and stereo line in/out behaviours has been a great addition to my own system and I'm proud to say to lots of other users systems too. 

As a side note, please do continue to tag me in anything you do with any of my modules (or even just patch ideas from videos) it's a pleasure to check those out. 

Thinking of new module ideas, well ... I have plenty! More than I have the means to bring them to life. But some are in the works, one of those ideas is with a newer company that we saw make some fantastic performing modules this year that looked good, sounded good and patched well. Their existing modules have a rich varied palette and range of options based on how you patch and work with them, which is something I'm exploring with ideas for the new collab module with them. I should say I am exploring other ideas with people I've worked with before too and all going well 2023 will be a multiple-DivKid-module year! Exciting stuff.

My next video

At this point I should say the next thing coming up is a video premiere (so you can join us, chat and hangout!) at 8pm UK (time in your location on the video link) on Thursday the 29th of December. The video demos not 1 but 2 new Eurorack modules and gives 10+ patch ideas for using and abusing distortion from more subtle warmth to more full on fuzziness!

Check out that video HERE and hopefully see some of you in the live chat at launch time.

That's a wrap!

Like the wrapping paper any kids in your lives thrashed through Christmas morning that quickly ended up in a bin bag that's it, end of post, goodbye and see you next year! 

This already feels really long and indulgent, but it's nice to look back at the year, the opportunities we've had, things we've done and ideas for the year ahead. I wish you all the best for a great year ahead. 

p.s. watch out for that "best of" video that's come soon.