Help Dylan Make Music

Hi everyone,

As you might know, I have been making and releasing music for years now.  Making music is something I'm good at; my music has been played on BBC Radio 1 and by DJs around the world. You might have heard it on the streaming service of your choice or through purchasing it at Naive Trax or Bandcamp . My music has been one of the very few things that gives me joy. I have met (online and in "real life") wonderful people through it. I'm grateful for the opportunities I've been given and done my best to use them to put my music out there and to make people smile a bit and shake their butts.

You also might know that I'm disabled. I have a severe anxiety disorder, complicated by my lived experience as a transgender person, that required me to leave my last job in 2017. My condition has kept me from doing anything that pays, apart from my music, and that doesn't bring in anything more than a few bucks here and there. I applied for government disability benefits in early 2018 to help cover my previous contribution to our household budget. Four years of hearings, documentation, denials, and appeals haven't yet resulted in any support and I am currently waiting on the decision of an appeal at the regional level. (It is a very long and incredibly disheartening process, as anyone who has navigated the bureaucracy of government benefits will tell you.)

Recently, things have become harder for me. The particular anxiety I deal with has a way of overlapping with symptoms of various attention disorders and other conditions that relate to becoming overwhelmed by information and being able to concentrate on details. Menu-diving, multitasking, and scrolling are all much more difficult for me than they were a year or two ago, and in turn, I have retreated from working on music on my computer, for the most part.

However, I have found that using hardware-- that is, actual synthesizers, rather than software emulations of them-- can be productive and even soothing. I find hardware simple when it doesn't involve screens, blinking lights, or navigating menus or hidden features. There are very few synthesizers out there that meet those criteria these days, but there are a few... and I dream of having them available to use at home in my little side-room studio.

But, I have no means to afford them on my own. As I said earlier, music doesn't bring in much of anything and, though I am lucky to have a strong, stable relationship with Miriam, (who has worked her ass off and kept our lights on and refrigerator stocked!) our household finances don't allow for me to buy any new musical instruments.

Therefore I am humbly reaching out to you, my community, to ask for your help and generosity.

If you are able to spare a little money, please consider sharing your resources with me so I can afford to make this transition from the complex computer screen to something simpler and more immediate that my often-addled brain can manage. The amount of this fundraiser is intended to cover three synthesizers that I am already familiar with and have enjoyed using, and additionally a stand or desk to put them on, and better speakers.


Thank you,

Dylan


This is the equipment I’m hoping to buy with your donations:
-Korg MS-20 FS (~$1500)
-Korg ARP Odyssey (~$1000)
-Moog Grandmother (~$1300)
-A studio-grade desk or set of stands to hold these three synths and my recording equipment (~$700)
-A pair of studio speakers to replace my old, unreliable pair (~$500)

For a total of $5000 to work with towards that goal