This is for You.

There have been Way too many times this year that death has stepped in through the door of our lives.

 I am so saddened to hear the loss of another exceptionally wonderful person, Delinda Dryssen

(Denise Williams) who passed away only yesterday.

 Todays  post from me is  short simply  because

  being able to say something very eloquent and express my thoughts in a meaningful way in type isn't going the way I want it to

some days it's just too damn hard.

 But for those of you who are my dearest friends who I know this year between you all
 have lost
 a Mother, a Child, a Wife, a Husband, a Grandfather, an Aunt and a Best Friend.

 and to those others who really DID make  a difference in their lives even at the very end

 This one is for you.

  

       -----------------Memory---------------------
Composed, Arranged and Lyrics: SlimGirlFat
Lead Vocals: SlimGirlFat
Backing Vocals: Al Ligammari

It's All About You

Music Groups are of huge importance in getting the word out that your show is happening.

Not to be confused with Event Listings, Group Notices  and Group IMs are one of the main ways of announcing your event to  every group member in one go just before your event.

   As more and more musicians  start performing live  in SL of course the number of  these notices  increases each day.

Some of the music groups only allow the Musician/performer to post a notice. Some, also  allow a venue owner or host/musician manager to post for the performer.

By allowing  the  host or the venue to post the event  it can  take the pressure off the musician/performer in announcing his/her own set whilst setting up.

Along with the ever increasing  influx of new  musicians performing live, posting a creative and eye catching announcement makes some even more desperate as we all vie for attention

Common  Misconceptions about how to post a Music  Event

(or those guaranteed to annoy just about everyone who reads them)

Using All  Caps

 Typing  the event  notice or  group IM in capitals makes the  event more noticeable.

Example 1

' U MUST COME AND LISTEN TO THIS AWESOME  SINGER PERFORMER OMG HE IS AMAZING I CANT BELIEVE IT'S NOT BUTTER MUSICIAN. HE IS A ROCK LEGEND.THE VERY BEST IN SL. OMG ITS  FABULOUS EVERYONE IN SL IS HERE WE HAVE LIKE 500  NEAR THE STAGE AND U BETTER GET HERE OR U WILL MISS THIS INCREDIBLE ECLETIC UNIQUE SEXY STUNNING ORIGINAL ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD BUT ITS GREAT PLEASE TAKE UR TAXI/CABRIOLET/ARMCHAIR AND GET UR BUTTS HERE TO LISTEN'

  It doesn't make the show any better.

Wording:

Lets provide the  artist background info to make them look more interesting/more talented

  

 Example 2

 Born to  Mr and Mrs Notso n00b  in 1970  n00b Star  attended  rock school elementary high school and made quite a few friends.  Whilst spending an inordinate amount of time in school detention for failing to finish homework in time, the  young n00b Star decided that perhaps life would  be more fun if  there was music in her life. After leaving school she  went to a lot of pubs and listened to an awful  lot of  live music and  one day while she was in the pub she heard a singer and  decided then and there to become one herself..........

Posting  a complete Life biography of an artist is not only useless but most people will not read any of

it.

 Untruthful Statements

  Whilst trying to raise the profile of the musician, some posters become totally indulgent and OTT  in their event descriptions of the artist.

Example 3

Having taken the world by storm with her hauntingly eclectic spoon banging, n00b star has risen to the ranks of  legendary status here in SL. Reigning supreme over absolutely every musician/performer  in this virtual world, (in fact there aren't any other musicians  as talented or as amazing as n00b Star in the whole world actually) so you would be wasting your time going to listen to anyone else ever again after hearing n00b so come and join us

  and just how many other musicians have you heard?

Caps and Lowercase

 Choosing  to type in a mixture of caps and lowercase makes the show look more interesting.

Example 4

JoIn uR frIenDS aS wE RoCK SeCoNd LiFE  wItH n00b StAr aNd HeR sPoOn bAnGing

 Maybe you have a faulty keyboard but that is VERY hard to read.

Emoticons and Squiggles

 Dressing up an event post makes me look like a cool event host

Example 5 

➜➜     ♬   ♬ ☺ ☀ .: ★/ \  n00bStar >   ㄨ  ㄨ¶      .:  ✳WOOOT ✳ㄨ ㄨ ☺  ☀ .: ★

✳WOOOT ✳ㄨ ㄨ ☺  ☀ .: ★♬   ♬♬   ♬♬   ♬✳ㄨ ㄨ ☺  ☀ .: ★

☺  ☀ .: ★♬   ♬♬ Spoon Banging ♬♬   ♬✳ㄨ ㄨ ☺  ☀ .: ★

☀ .: ★♬   ♬♬

 Er... what time is the event?

Wrong Group

What I have to tell you all is VERY important regardless of  the  group  name or function

Example 6

➜➜     ♬   ♬ ☺ ☀ .: ★/ \   FREE  MONEY>   ㄨ  ㄨ¶      .:  ✳WOOOT ✳ㄨ ㄨ ☺ UR CHANCE TO WIN 250 $LS ☀ .: ★☀ . NAKED AVATARS ONLY ★☀ .: ★

Gosh, let me drop everything I am doing right now and  turn up!

The Repetitive Post

My Tips are commission based.

{15.29}  n00b Star Live at 4PMSLT spoon banging,  Awesome!

{15.31}  n00b Star Live at 4PMSLT spoon banging,  Awesome!

{15.35}  n00b Star Live at 4PMSLT spoon banging,  Awesome!

{15.40}  n00b Star Live at 4PMSLT spoon banging,  Awesome!

{15.43}  n00b Star Live at 4PMSLT spoon banging,  Awesome!

{15.49}  n00b Star Live at 4PMSLT spoon banging,  Awesome!

{15.52}  n00b Star Live at 4PMSLT spoon banging,  Awesome!
{16.00}  n00b Star Live NOW! spoon banging,  Awesome!

   I am so glad you posted that or I would have missed the show!

The Weeks Events in IM

I don't know how do a single post in  Event Listings

Monday: 5pm n00b star

                6pm n00b star

                7pm n00b star 

                8pm n00b Star

Tuesday: 4pm n000b star

             5pm n00b Star

              6pm  n00b Star

Wednesday: 2pm n00b Star

                        3pm OPEN MIC 

                    4pm  n00b Star

   I have all that memorized  completely!

--------------------------------

Of course I could write up  a few more examples and poke fun at the number of ways that people like  to post the music shows in SL. 

 BUT, if you are a musician/performer and you want to be taken seriously, then Do  check how notices of your events are  posted and how they may viewed by the rest of us.

 Don't  let  your managers/ hosts contribute to one of the main reasons people leave Groups

   Would be pretty sad to see a message like this on your screen

"You are the only participant  in this IM session. Your message is not being retransmitted or stored"

There is certainly  room for creativeness and fun and also mistakes, but when you truly DO see these  similar  examples on a daily basis, the  chances of people attending drops dramatically when they discover that on arrival, perhaps your hyped up super worded event  doesn't quite add up to the star  quality promised.

 or maybe

 no one cares
* edited to add*-  as we are all learning to  ignore the  notices all together

It's all a matter of Visibility

When you perform on line, whether it be in a Virtual World or on Livestream, or Ustream,  having a visible event calendar  of when you perform and what time etc is essential.

How else would anyone know when we are  around to wow them with our talent,  and hopefully make that single or album sale!

  

Duh!   Everyone knows that. 

In the world of Secondlife, however, this is not being made very easy!

 The  Music events listings have come in for  quite a bit of criticism in one way or another, in particular on Viewer 2. But in general, with a bit  of patience and persistence,   you do get to see the  music event listings and are then able to make your choices about where to go to listen to Live music.

  Today  a good friend of mine ( and Venue owner) read a thread on Live music in SL and  she became concerned when she saw this reply .

Quote:

"1. Did you know that there were live music performances happening in Second Life nearly every hour of the day and night, every day?" This doesn't seem to be the case anymore.  I remember when I could choose from a variety of live music events any time of the day or night, and there would be multiple pages... but now there's only two or three.  It seems like live music has dropped by 80%.  Am I alone in this observation?"

  Now  most of us realise and know, there are hundreds of  Live music shows in Secondlife. More or less

 24/7 you can go to hear any number of musicians  and performers in hundreds of music venues.

BUT 

Recently Linden Lab decided to make a few changes to  the event  listings.

When you posted your event on the website so it shows up in inworld search and of course on the website, you used to be able to set the maturity rating when you entered your show on the events list ie:  PG, Mature or Adult.

 The vast majority of Live shows are always PG.

   

Now here is the absolutely brilliant new concept recently implemented by LL

You cannot do that anymore.

because Linden Lab have set the event listings visible based on the Sim rating

 NOT the event.
 Which means ONLY PG events are listed on the website and in the default search inworld.

So, 

If you  own your own sim  and it is set to PG, and you have a Live music event, it will show up in the  default event listing. Yay!!!

 If you are  observant enough, you can even click to change your search  rating to include mature and adult listings for music events and voila! music events forever. Yay!!

  Now imagine you  only rent a parcel for your venue and it is on a mature sim  because perhaps the owner has a business there. 

You post your event and

 it doesn't show in search.. 

because if your venue is on a  Mature or Adult sim, you have no choice, the listing will  be given the sim rating, not the event  and of course you can't change that rating if

 your venue space is rented on a Mature sim.

So Linden Lab have now in one  fell swoop  excluded  quite an awful lot of music events. 

At the time of writing this, I looked in the listings are there were only 28 live music events listed in the next 24 hours..

  usually I would be looking to see well over 150 listed over 24 hours.

For goodness sake bring back the  ability for those posting their Live music events to set the maturity rating regardless of the SIM rating, otherwise we will all be off to another world where perhaps  it is all about the visibility and music.

 I do  find this all rather ironic,  as the latest  LL email newsletter is about  Live music.

Anyway, do continue to Rock On as usual in SL

 but don't be surprised  if you find yourself  pretty much  in your own  company when you do. 

I want to Play with You

It's been one of the coolest things being a musician and being able to share my music online. One  aspect of the internet is that musicians can of course collaborate easily together. With a few applications available we can also jam together in Realtime.

 For some , trying to  duet together on skype is a way to at least practice.  Skype is not an ideal collab tool for musicians, mainly due to latency and  the inability to really tweak the audio levels and generally the  quality is pretty low compared to other applications.

Another  way  to  jam together is to use  a daisy chain stream ( or relay), basically you need  several streams for each musician to hook into and they then  hijack each stream (in a chain), until eventually  you can have an single stream  with everyone hooked up, This is a great way to jam, unfortunately the person before you on  the stream  cannot hear the person in front.  It also requires a lot of practice. 

I have  posted a shot clip of a multi relay jam  I did with  4 other musicians back in 2006, live into SL, The quality of course is not perfect at all, and to have that many people one one stream requires a great deal of practice  to get levels, and timing correct. However we all had a lot of fun and proved that  you are not just  tied to a duet or trio.  Some distortion and timing issues but for a spontaneous 1st try out, I think we did pretty ok!
The jam was with Juel Resistance, Ricardo Sprocket, Myself, Melvin Took  and DimiVan Ludwig

 There are  a few applications/software  and websites that will now allow you to jam creatively online in realtime with other musicians and I will list them below!

Back in 2005, Justin Frankel, ( creator of Winamp), announced a new product called Ninjam that allowed multiple musicians to jam online with actual audio ( not  Midi).The music is delayed by a few measures to keep everything in sync. You can have up to 10 on one server, although the standard seems to be between 4-5 max for a good sound.This is currently free to use
NINJAM
There is also a  forum for ninjam
NINJAM FORUM


In 2006 Alan Glueckman founded EJamming. At first the  format was the compression standard, the familiar MIDI.This has expanded with  the  new 2010 version  ( audio )  and can now connect up to 4 musicians in an improved ' Live' track by track recording session. This has a Free trial and then I believe a US$9.95 subscription charge
EJAMMING

Another online jamming website is
 ONLINE JAM SESSIONS
They have 3 free rooms to try out, After signup you have levels of membership to sign up to including  Live Video  function.

And Last but not least is RiffLink
RiffWorks  T4 is Free,  and Riff Works Standard is US$129
RIFFLINK

Having tried both Ejamming ( when it was Midi) and also Ninjam, for preference I would choose Ninjam. it has an easy to use interface and  of course it is free :)
 But DO go and try them all out!

  For at least 4 years many  musicians using Second Life  have also taken advantage of  Daisy Chain Streaming then  Ninjam or Ejamming  to present shows in SL.
A  familiar Band name to many of you is of course the SL Band 'V.L.B'  founded in 2007 ( currently 4 members) using Ninjam, who have toured extensively in SL.
 V.L.B

 The Video below is  with SL Musician JooZz  ( Netherlands)
Torben Scharling ( Copenhagen)
Andy McIce Man ( UK)

This is the recording of a totally spontaneous Live Jam  using Ninjam



Happy Jamming  :)