Music

Stuff about music, either mine or stuff I am listening to.

Doing live music in Metaplace

 Posted by (Visited 6176 times)  Gamemaking, Music  Tagged with:
Jun 132009
 

Yesterday I had a real urge to play some guitar for people. It used to be that I’d get to do a few hours of playing songs for people at every Cub Scout camp-out — but David is into Scouts proper now, and I don’t go on the camping trips. So I left the office saying, “I might do a concert thing in Metaplace this weekend…” A few folks said to let them know if I did.

Which just added to the pressure! I had never tried it before! So I figured that I should do a dry run first. And I did it last night, and you know, it was a heck of a lot of fun — but also pretty different. So here’s what I did and what it felt like. I am sure some of this is old hat to those of you who have done lots of this in Second Life, but it was new to me. 🙂

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Koinup Rocking the Metaverse

 Posted by (Visited 10636 times)  Game talk, Music  Tagged with: ,
Jun 012009
 

The Koinup “Rocking the Metaverse” live music tour is hitting Metaplace tomorrow, Tuesday June 2nd, at 1pm Pacific time, after having been to Orange Island in Second Life, and ReactionGrid (an OpenSim world). After Metaplace comes Twinity. There’s a great line-up, too:

The guys here made an awesome custom music venue for it complete with all sorts of cool stuff for musicians and promoters, including stuff like lighting controls, a VIP area with bouncers, a cool audience feedback system that uses crowd metrics to drive applause audio, and event metrics so that performers can see how many attended and for how long.

There will be teleporters available from Metaplace Central, or you can jump straight to the world. You can RSVP on Facebook if you like. More details are here.

I’m looking forward to this — we’ve had several live music events already in Metaplace, and they are always a blast. This will be the largest to date, and Koinup has done a great job organizing the event.

The Sunday Song: I Will Be There For You

 Posted by (Visited 6107 times)  Music
May 032009
 

I wrote this song for my son. He’s been having migraine headaches and some sort of sinus infection, and has missed a lot of school. He’s also just turned 11, and you can see him growing up day by day. But I suppose it could be from anyone to anyone, really.

Guitar is in double-dropped D, then capo III; song’s in Bb. It still could use a fresh vocal track, a fresh bass track, and it’s missing the backing vocal part from midway to the end (software crash ate it).

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Apr 072009
 

Boy, am I neglecting blogging lately. Even my Twitter has gone mostly silent.

There have been several stories that caught my eye. For example, this one about musicians making decent gig money in Second Life was interesting, in part because some of what a virtual environment provides is an easier way to do marketing. As I have said before, I think the future of a lot of the arts is around personal relationships with their fans because of the way the landscape is shifting around information and money, and there’s something about virtual worlds that helps build fandoms.

Speaking of personal relationships, while at the IGF and GDC awards, I was struck by the clear signs of “celebrity” that some of the event had. Some of this was due, no doubt, to the fact that Tim Schafer’s performance as emcee was funnier and more entertaining than that of the emcees for any televised awards show. Some of it, though, was the evident fact that the creators of indie games are getting known as names, in large part because they produce quirky and individualistic games at a rapid rate. Which brings me to mention The Croopier, just because it’s a neat project.

Which reminds me that there’s a new documentary premiering on journalism in virtual worlds — talk about a profession that is in upheaval thanks to changes in business models and the value of information! I’m halfway through a galley copy of Cory Doctorow’s upcoming novel, in which a journalist figures pretty prominently… and struck by how prescient Bruce Sterling was when he said “information wants to be worthless.”

Which leads me to idly speculate… if anything that can be digitized will be, and anything that is digitized becomes worthless, then what will eventually remain both undigitizable and therefore monetizable?