sonicviz

There are a couple of new blogs on the SecondLife Music scene.

The SLMC is focused on Live Music specifically, while MetaMusic is looking more at soundtracking and ambient audioscapes.

It’s all music to me!

I missed the first inworld meeting of the MetaMusic group due to Rl, but reading the chatlog I had a couple of initial thoughts to some of the dialogue that bounced around.

re: MIDI

Open Sound Control can encapsulate midi and is potentially a much more useful protocol to implement, as it has uses for everything from audio to control.

I remember pushing hard for OSC with the old LL voting system in SL waaaay back…but without the new SL design allowing for scalability and real time data input that’s probably still on the back burner for a while.

re: Audio and Sound

There are quite a few interesting advanced audio engines for games on the marketplace, as it is a specialist middleware market similar to the game engine middleware market they plug into.

AFAIK SL still uses the old FMOD sound engine.

One option is for LL to scale up their audio team and look at how they can take full advantage of the FMOD’s replacement for it called FMODEX. Or at least evaluate the competitor engines and see what functionality they offer and which ones might best match a set of use cases based around enhancing the overall ambient sound experience in sl [or other worlds for that matter!]

Sun’s Project Darkstar, for example, has an audio system called jvoicebridge. While not as functional in the interactive audio space like FMODEX and other audio engines looks to have some neat specs for general audio.

And of course there’s always good old OpenAL!

I’ll be looking at these in closer detail soon.

Even Cyborgs get the Blues!

Find out how in the first episode of Komuso the BluesBorg’s travels through the metaverse…

I’ve done two previous SL music machinima as soundtrack artist and one of them was also as producer.

This effort was an attempt to cover a few bases on a number of levels, in addition to seeing if it was possible to use a low end tool like Windows Movie Maker to produce reasonable machinima.

And the answer is..yes! Though not without some problems. Music videos are particularly tricky with synchronization between audio and video, and WMM lacks video track locking functions which make it a little tricky - but we got there in the end.

Celtx was invaluable for pre-production and tracking production work - and it’s free and open source!

I hope you find it interesting!

cu in the bitstream soon, kt

Well, I have to say after all the downgrades and bugs we have endured ever since the SL marketing push started it’s good to play with something new that WORKS!

I was playing with the voice First Look client, and though I had previously dismissed the idea of using it for music due to the encoding restrictions etc Why SL voice is inappropriate for music performance

a) was it possible
b) What did it sound like
c) would people be interested
d) what were some of the limitations and constraints for performing with it.

Why not give it a shot, nothing to lose!

So I set myself up, tp’d to a new empty sim I knew was voice enabled and plugged in.
Interesting! Lost all my stereo width, and the sound was a bit squeezed with the voice codec, but as I usually play dirty blues it sounded quite damn funky - a bit like busking in the tube with a low grade dirty amp! [which I have previously done a lot of in rl at various times]

Also the sound was very different in my monitoring headphones from my usual setup, so it took a little adjusting to play with this.

So after a quick fiddle I hit my blues group and tp a few people in with voice clients and awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay we go.
SL Voice Busking 1

SL Voice Busking 2

I jammed a couple of quick numbers out and we played with some of the settings to see where the issues are but the general consensus was … YES!

A few tips learnt from this early test:
. only the musician should be in lockdown talk mode, eveyone else in push to talk
. individuals should use the list of people button next to the voice controls to turn down everyone else so they can just hear them and turn the musician up - that is if you want to hear them I guess!
. audience is hearing positional sound now, so may need to adjust their physical and/or camera position to hear properly
. musician should turn down all other sounds in preferences, set voice to a comfortable level
. musician should set your input signal level to just below the red visuals when you are speaking/playing [ie: clipping/crackle point]

We have another string to our musical grid bow;-)
Thanks Linden Lab!

Ty to Towanda Middle and Angelika Jacobus for the tips while I tested!
Thanks to Rayo for one of the shots above!

Cu in the bitstream soon for some grid busking in addition to my regular High Quality streaming gigs!

CNN ran a story on the 29th May about Concerts merge live, Internet and virtual world which poses a number of questions for all of us interested in virtual live performances, whatever your role.

“Live events could be the music “product” of the future” they state, with the capstone being “But once that curiosity factor dies, will anybody still care?”

Komuso Tokugawa

Based on my extensive experience performing in SL over the last year and a half [300+ gigs] and building a successful in-world micro-community based around Live performance as the core goal [as opposed to acting primarily as a CD sales pitch] I would say yes, but not for the reasons that the current crop of brand marketers and record company execs might think!

This NYT article also touches on some interesting points related to getting in closer contact with your fan base and the issues in managing it.

Here’s a quick shortlist of some of the current players, apart from SecondLife, that are in this space. I’ll be reviewing these in more detail from different perspectives [performer, audience, advertiser, etc] in future posts.

MTV with Virtual Laguna Beach and Virtual Lower East Side. 3pointD have a short piece on the vLES here.
The virtual Lower East Side is based on the Doppleganger platform apparently, who already have MusicLounge in beta.
Nightlife Interactive also appear to have something in play.
The Videoranch seems to based around professional musicians, and I’ll be checking that out this week.
MusicWorld3D rounds off this quick shortlist.

Update:
vSide from Doppleganger has launched, with a walled garden brand marketing focus on the teen market. They have just signed their first reup with Interscope records, who seem to have been involved with the music lounge mentioned above, which itself has now morphed into vSide.
Stay tuned for more in depth looks at the above!]]>

Following on from Musician vs. Venue
where I posted on Joshua Bell’s Busking experiment.

It’s a good read, but it does deserve some critical analysis as well.
Sawlady is a perceptive one from an experienced street musician, with whom I agree that busking itself is an art form.

I’ve spent time in the past as a street musician in various european cities, including 7+ months on Las Ramblas in Barcelona way back in 91 [I think]

As I’ve said before [ slmusic blog ], playing in sl/metavers [atm] is to me a cross between street playing and a small bar. You have to connect with the audience, as saw lady points out, but at the same time [as any experienced street musician will tell you. especially one who does not have an experienced hat worker helping them increase the take] you cannot play with the thought of money in your mind.

If you play with the thought of tips in your mind it seems to disturb the ability to connect with your musical core, in my experience. You have to play as if you don’t care how much you get for the gig [and sometimes you will get almost nothing;-)]

In general tho, I’ve found this attitude frees your mind to concentrate on the most important thing - playing the music that will allow you to connect with the listeners. It’s a little bit of street zen, but that’s the nature of a job where you can’t force people to pay you what you think you are worth.

I was talking about this with Ricardo Sprocket recently and he mentioned a HBO special on street musicians where an old blues guy on a corner put it best when he said:
“when i first started i’d get upset cause i’d have days when nobody put money in the case. but soon i learned that if you make it about the money the music suffers, so i just come out here and play the best i can every day and appreciate what i get.”

Of course there are tricks of the trade to stimulate or embarress people into giving, but these are not really genuine and if you resort to them they will not help you build a base of loyal music followers, though they may increase your income in the short term.

Melancholy Elephants

referenced from Derivative musical works and copyright

Maybe the people at Technology and IP Policy Day need to read these again.
Ref: Riks Blog post on it