Live musicians: what do they get out of it?

I find most of my music acts by leaping from one moment in time to another righting what once went wrong . . . man I'm tired. Sorry. I find most of my music acts by leaping from one music event listed in Live Music (skipping the DJ ones), and sometimes am confused when I get a group notice of a music act performing "Right now!" and do not see a LM and do not see them in Live Music Events.

Oh, and for the "live music" part, I had mostly meant the singing. Most admit to having prerecorded the instruments or using someone else's instruments. Some though appear to be playing the music instruments right then as well as singing. Some do nothing but prerecorded stuff. It is still their work though, apparently. There was one "original song" recently that sounded very familar. Not sure about why.

There are several that I rather like that play with their music instruments and talk about tuning them. They may or may not just have thrown that bit in there.

Hey all, I am a musician in Second Life, play here now exclusively with my band Friendly Fire doing our own music (no covers), and we get a lot out of it. I played locally in town for 20 plus years, dragged my gear from one end of the state to the other, sat in smoky bars until 2 AM to play to the chairs, all while trying to keep a lineup together and break even on gas money and bar tab. SL solved almost every problem we had. Can't keep a drummer? Not a problem, I program the drums myself, in this enviroment it works. Tired of hounding club owners and booking agents for gigs? In SL we have gigs coming out of our ears, in December alone we will have done roughly 30 shows. I play to a worldwide audience almost nightly from the comfort of my living room. Astounding.

We play guitar and bass and sing live, and use programmed drums. It's more restrictive than having an actual drummer, but not by a lot. We are upfront about this, to the point of rezzing a laptop on my amp to represent the 'drummer'.

Sure, I miss jumping around on a stage, it was a diffiicult adjustment trying to channel the energy into a monitor screen, but when we're steamrolling through a song and the people in the crowd are going nuts with gestures and chat, it's as powerful an experience as a real life gig. This past Wednesday night we played to close to 60 people primarily from Italy and Germany, here in town I am lucky if there's 10 people at the gig on a Wednesday night, including the help. More often that not we'd lose money of RL gigs, in SL we make money. I couldn't be happier about playing in SL. I don't get why more bands aren't doing this.

Getting to the top echelon, I know of someone whose appearance fee is knocking on for 15-20K for a 2 hour set and he must make lots on tips ... but he's good. He's REALLY good. He's impress the music industry people in SL good ...

Case, you are not set up for Forum IMs so ... what sort of music do you play? Might have a little work for you if compatiable genre IM me in world?

I'd have to guess from personal experience and from reading this thread that it would be mostly for the fun of doing it. Check out the Virtual Live Band as well if you get a chance. Really amazing.

Great to hear from a musician Must try to find your band and catch a show. Only as it is another place to put up some stuff, and not as competition of anything else, I note http://www.slusic.com/ is a nice little website filled with SL musicians.

Whoops, that is now fixed. We play uptempo rock and roll, heavy on vocal harmonies, flash guitar, and wise guy lyrics. I'll ping you in world later this evening! If you google 'friendly fire second life' we're all over the place.

I think the Live Music events list is very incomplete. Some of the best events I've been to were never listed there, and I can't figure out why... other than some of the performers or venues have big enough followings that they must feel that their groups are enough. Certainly they aren't enough if they don't include a LM or a SURL in their notices!



I take a rather dim view on that. That, to me, is DJing. Call a spade a spade.


Funny you should mention that. Last night, Rich Desoto tuned his guitar mid-performance and commented that someone (I forget the name) had told him he shouldn't ever do that on-air. I wonder if that's why!

In the last two days I've seen two performances by Matthew Perreault and rather liked his work. Oh right. At one point the host held up a sign that said "Tune" and there was some confusion. She wanted a particular song played (something about staplers), and he thought she wanted him to tune his guitar. There was some a little bit of tuning that occurred during the confusion.

I do not know if he plays his guitar live or not. I had the impression, during some songs, that he was playing it live, but there was one occasion when he sneezed or coughed or something and continued uninterrupted the guitar playing. That or the guitar was prerecorded and continued playing. Not that you can't sneeze and continue playing the guitar at the same time

Isn't it generally fairly easy to figure out what's being played live and what not?
If there's one person on stage and you hear four instruments, it's a bit of a give-away

Plus most musicians I've heard have been pretty clear and upfront about it themselves.

Apart from that, I've heard lots of live musicians tune guitars, change instrument, chat, laugh etc. All part of the fun I'd say.

No! Just a happy accident.

I meant streaming from an RL venue where the musicians were being paid properly. I can't think of any other way to book professional musicians into SL -- but it implies that the first step is to promote the gigs in RL, which usually means a huge amount of work just to break even, if you are lucky.

I've seen the guy I know do that. I've attended...hm...probably 4 or 5 of his shows now. You can tell when he actually does do a "live" song because he does as you mentioned - changes the name or the location, or whatever.

LOL..If I had his talent (and his agent), I could almost retire

There is at least one music act that had two people involved, live, right then and there, but one didn't come in world.

Another two used the prerecorded work of another Sl musician, but that goes with what you were saying

I'm a musician that performs in SL. Though I have played guitar for a hundred years, I usually sing to tracks that I've created on my computer. I like to do my own arrangements of old songs, that generally everyone enjoys and therefore are hard to mess up. Sometimes I get comments that I am a karaoke singer. This doesn't disturb me though, as I know that each track I am singing to is my own creation and represents hours of hard and tedious work that I'm proud of. I've been doing what I do (recording and arranging) for more than 35 years, and SL is really the first outlet I've had to be able to have my "band" back up my singing. So actually it was a serendipitous surprise to me to find out that a. there was a live music scene in SL and b. what I did - the technology I use and stuff - would work here. But as for the original question, why do it for so little pay - I do it as a hobby, some way I spend my time doing something I enjoy. The real sugar on top of it all is if the people that listen to me enjoy what I do. Cause then we area all enjoying together, and there's something about that that provides a sense of belonging. If you ever see my show, I don't think you'll have any problems knowing that I use tracks (I always tell people in case they can't figure that out (though I do still get people who IM me to ask me how I play pan flute and sing at the same time)), and that I sing live (because I'm always messing up).

For the critics, I can tell you this: surely you have something better to do then go from show to show looking to insult people who play for next to nothing and which you have not paid any amount to see and hear. This is why God invented the TP. I mean, if I go somewhere in SL and I am not enjoying the moment - I just move along. My life is not so dreary that I have to make a spectacle of myself by showing others that I am way more knowledgeable than them in judging whether this or that event is worthy for others. You sort of have to be an idiot to heckle someone that has a microphone, ya know? On the other hand, when you get griefed as a performer, you sorta know you've got some sort of status or else why would they bother.

Live music on SL is really way cool. It's one thing you can nearly always do no matter how lagged SL is (providing you can get to the event). Cause even if ya has yer hair and boots up yer bumm you can still hear the music and chat with others about all the stuff that isn't working.

Hi, all. I haven't read the whole thread. One of the gang on the SLMC forum posted a link to this thread, saying it was interesting. And, he was right. This is very interesting. I'll have to read everyone's comments as soon as I can.

I am a songwriter who came to SL to sing

I don't gig in RL. And, I only have just started playing live in SL (even though I've been in SL for over a year now). But, I will tell you two things:

1 - I sing because none of you will hear my music unless I take it to you directly, and

2 - It's fun!

It's great to be able to hold a concert where a group of people can get together so easily. I can perform without dragging a whole bunch of equipment around. And, I could perform in my underware, if I wanted to (or had to). And, most people are just super! I've only been griefed once. So, that's not bad.

Anyway, for 2008 I'm planning on getting "in-there" more often. I hope some of you will stop by sometime. Just watch the events.

Thanks.

I find this statement highly implausible.



If true, though, you must have some really hardcore calluses.

I've wondered about that too Nad

/me sends Nad a hug .... and stuff

Cool to see the SLMC gang here!

Hey, neat, caught a minute or so of your show two days ago before I crashed

I have no problem with live singing against prerecorded background.

And it seems a little odd putting all the years together. Played guitar for 100 years, performing for more than 35 years, performing in real life for 30 years before SL, and raised by lemurs. Wait, not the lemurs part but the "young man" part.

My promoters put the "young man" part in cause they said no one wants to listen to old guys sing. I may be off on the number of years I have played guitar, I'm not real good at math.

Anyways. Bottom line is that prolly a lot of ppl who perform do this as a hobby - just for fun. At this meager rate (in dollars) I am able to afford SL rent, and haven't had to put any RL $ into the place in a long time. I mean you may ask the same of builders. Why would you spend HOURS building that thingy and sell it for L$1k? A real life builder would prolly make more than that ya know. And don't get me started on hairdressers.

Neat I was actually thinking of a female singer, though

I can offer another reason as to why we would perform in SL: several performers (myself & my wife included) are parents. Not only would we have to schlep our gear around town to some club to play (maybe for as little actual money as in SL), we'd also have to hire a sitter whom you could trust & who could stay really late.

However, almost all of our shows have been late at night - after the kids go to bed. We're downstairs, playing while they sleep - and when we're done, we simply switch off & go to bed.

Oh, and there's one thing I want to clear up for the naysayers: a stream is a stream. If I send up a 96k stream of a 100 piece symphony, it's exactly the same size as a 96k stream of some dude with a guitar. The idea that somehow stream size relates to whether something is real or Memorex is complete bunk.

And, while your mileage will vary, in general there should be no problem streaming from cable or DSL - we only have to send ONE stream out to a streaming server - which is most likely on a T1 or better - and the server handles all the connections from there.

So far, we've done live 2-instrument-and-vocal shows exclusively. However, I would like to branch out & use some backing tracks as well, with full disclosure. Why? Because IMHO, it would simply sound better than me banging on an electric guitar, unaccompanied.

Sure, I could fake the whole thing - but I don't perform just for attaining the status of being Somebody. I do it because I love to play. Take it for what it's worth, believe it or don't - just remember that you're also not getting hit with a cover charge, so it doesn't cost you anything.

Regarding the programmed drums - there's a performer I've listened to some lately that uses what must be programmed drums.

I think his guitar and voice would do just fine without the drums. I think it would be better without the drums. Of course I've not heard it both ways so I might be wrong and my opinion might be the uncommon one, but maybe not.

So musicians please give thought to leaving out the programmable drums. Might sound better and let you be really spontaneous as well.

Ok, I have never even been to a live performance in SL......I will have to go to a few soon just to see what they are all about so I'm not so lost in this thread lol

Ok, I'm a hairdresser where are you going with that?
Funny thing is I have no desire to make hair in SL.. odd yes?

Hmm....Kim Seifert? Now that girl is awesome! If not her, I'd love to know who, because I'm starting to get into this "live concert" thing