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When Brett Yang and Eddy Chen played a rendition of their favourite violin piece on the streets of Sydney last month, hundreds of people stopped and listened.
They played for five days, and by the time they finished, the musicians had made $50,000.
Known as Twoset Violin, the duo had committed to sleeping and busking on the streets until they had enough money to fund a classical music and comedy world tour.
"We didn't realise how hard it would be, the first day we were just running on adrenaline and I think on the fourth day we nearly died," Chen said.
Within five days of launching their campaign on Facebook Live, they had amassed more than 100,000 views, had 1,000 backers and smashed their $50,000 goal on crowdfunding website Kickstarter.
"I think every musician experiences this artistic struggle to make your dreams come true," Chen said.
"We really wanted this tour to happen even if it meant we would have to sleep on the streets and busk to make plane tickets."
Both in their mid-20s, the pair first began posting pop music violin covers to YouTube in 2013 with minimal fanfare.
"We didn't do much for the first few years, then we started to explore funny videos and that's when Twoset really took off," Yang said.
Constantly experimenting, Chen and Yang began posting parodies of life as students of classical music, and started attracting thousands of subscribers.
Over time, the YouTubers combined their passions and produced a comedy-music act they could tour around the country.
Instead of a conventional concert, the two scripted an hour-long comedy skit, accompanied by classical violin woven through the storyline.
Chen said the idea was to stray away from what young people perceived as "boring" music and share their love for classical in a relatable way.
"When we see the impact we've had on people who come up to us on the streets or in concerts and we see how much we've influenced them to pick up an instrument again and rediscover their love for music, I think that really inspires us," he said.
Both Griffith University alumni, the self-aware musicians explained the traditional way to fund tours was through government grants and sponsors, and admitted the idea for the Kickstarter came about as a matter of necessity rather than choice.
"Competition for an orchestra audition is crazy and we're not good at writing grants," Chen said.
"But part of the reason we chose crowdfunding was to see if it was a viable future for classical musicians to secure funding and for the audience to be able to participate in supporting the artist they want to see develop."
Twoset Violin will begin their world tour in July this year, playing in 11 cities across 10 countries.
Topics: music, arts-and-entertainment, people, human-interest, brisbane-4000
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