Building, Making items,Live music,DJing,Scripter,Animator and all that stuff.

Hello. For doing all that stuff do you need a program or how do you do all that stuff?

Thanks a lot for any help!
Spen

for building i use the tools in game
clothing making most people use outside tools like photoshop etc
animations and scripting people i know use outside programs like poser and im not sure of the other programs off the top of my head
for dj'ing i use SAM and im sure there are other programs out there as well ..you also need a stream you can get them out of game and i know there are people in game that offer streams for Linden or you can hire many of the fine dj's or dj companies in game
live music i have yet to have a good experience with this in game it has always been someone claiming to be a live group and its been people with in game instruments playing sound bites of real musicians music ie. bon jovi etc etc


anything else?

There are a couple of good places in game to get started. Use the search feature and look under events for classes. Check out The Ivory Tower. You can find it with the search button too.

Are you serious? There are live performances almost every night. Do a search, and set the category to Live Music. Most of the performers are usually just one person playing acoustic and singing (like me), or two people - doing full-band shows is a little tricky for most people. There are plenty of real performers, I have never been to an event that claimed to be live but played pre-recorded music. There is an open mic tomorrow night, I'll likely be doing a set. Check the events list.

At first I was using a Shoutcast server that resided on the same machine as my SL client. I could only get about 7-8 listeners when I played a show before it started crapping out. However, there are Shoutcast relays available and I decided to rent one. I got mine from Jamie Otis. It's 4000L a month, and it allows me to use it 24/7 if I want to. I can broadcast at up to 128k to 100 listeners.

Can't help out with the other things just yet, as I am only about a month old. But yes, the Ivory Tower is a great place to go to learn about how to work with prims.

How do you do live performances? What do you play with and how? And where do you get it from?

How:

I plug a guitar and mic into my mixer. I use a Shoutcast plugin for Winamp, and I stream my output to the Shoutcast relay I have rented, or to the relay of the venue I where I am playing if I am not playing on my own stage. When I play on my own stage, I set my land's "media" to the address of the Shoutcast relay to which I am streaming. Anyone who enters my land will be able to hear the performance.

What:

Not sure what you mean by this - currently I just use a stipped-down setup. Guitar/mic -> mixer -> soundcard -> winamp/shoutcast -> relay -> SecondLife. When I get my other computer running I will be able to do more complex things like use Reason and Sonar so I can have realtime effects and backing tracks.

Where:

Well, I got my shoutcast relay from Jamie Otis. I am not inworld now, so I can't remember the name of his store. But in order to use a shoutcast relay in the way I do, you must own or rent land.

Maybe if you tell us exactly what you are interested in doing, we can more easily point you in the right direction.

You have to use your own Guitar? I want to know how to do stuff like the topic says: Building,Making items,Live music,DJing,Scripter,Animator and all that stuff.

Er... I suppose I could borrow someone else's guitar if I had to, but I do have a couple of my own. I am talking about a real guitar here, man... I do have a guitar that I put on my avatar in SL when I am playing my real one too, so...

...exactly what do you want to do with live music? See shows? Perform shows?

Perform. I am asking how do you do that? What do you play with? If you want to use a guitar you have to use your own? Or can you like get a guitar in SL and play that?

Both.

I actually play a real guitar in my real home, and sing into a real mic. The audio from this is streamed into Second Life, where I stand on a virtual stage playing a virtual guitar, singing into a virtual mic. The sound that people hear is not from my SL guitar, it's from the real guitar I hold in my real hands when I perform.

There are playable instruments in SL like the Hyperflute and a piano I saw a video of Torley playing -- but they are more toys than anything. In order to do a performance that is not just clicking on stuff and one note at a time coming out, you need to have a real (non-SL) instrument.

Thanks for your help! Now I just need to know how to do: Building, Making items,DJing,Scripter,Animator and all stuff like that.

I am really sorry but how do you DJ again?

Spen, I teach classes on "how to be a working DJ or musician in SL"

Attend the first class (DTDJ#1) - How to stream music live in to SL

I believe its very similar to live music Spen. Take your tables and mixer, feed it into your sound card, set up a shout cast server, and there ya go.


If you don't have turntables, than there are many programs out there (virtual DJ, Reason, virtual turn tables, etc...) that you can use to try ot mix music. However if you've never done it on turntables, or can't beatmatch very well, I wouldn't consider DJing just yet.


Cheers.

Ok thanks for all your help! Now I am on: Building,Making items,Scripter,Animator and all that stuff.

Thanks again!

Hiyas Spen, I also do live music performance in SL. I play electric guitars & keyboards live using sequenced backing tracks with Cubase running on one computer. I have a second computer that I run my SL client on as well as a Winamp+Oddsock/Shoutcast combi that relays to an outside server. The outside server then feeds its' audio stream to the land parcel where I perform and then on to the listeners in the audience.

I wouldn't recommend any of the in-world instruments for real live work as they generally use short pre-recorded loops which are extremely limited in their capabilities. The main use for in-world musical intruments would be as stage props. It sure helps to have some visual cues for your audience to latch on to when you're playing as it gets a bit boring if you just leave your avatar standing on the spot while you're busy playing in your studio.

Chronic has already covered it quite well, but a working setup would be as follows:

1) [Studio] Instruments + microphones > mixing desk > computer audio input.

2) [Computer] Audio input > Winamp + either Shoutcast or Oddsock plugin > external audio server.

3) [External] External audio server > venue land parcel media input.

You can bypass the need for an external audio server if your internet connection has sufficient upload bandwidth. In which case your setup would be as follows:

1) [Studio] Instruments + microphones > mixing desk > computer audio input.

2) [Computer] Audio input > Winamp + either Shoutcast or Oddsock plugin > shoutcast server.

3) [External] Shoutcast server > venue land parcel media input.

Many venues in SL have their own audio server so you'll only need to feed your audio stream to their server. The RoC uses PalTalk for many of its' events. I haven't played there, but I gather it's very easy to set up.

Hello all,

I have been following this thread with a great deal of interest.

What I would like to know is if it possible to have two people perform live at the same time?

By two people, I mean people in physically separate places in RL perform so that it sounds like they are together in SL.

Would it be possible have the lead singer perform in, say, the United States, and a back-up singer or musician perfrom in Holland (putting aside the time co-ordination required) and have the audience hear the combined result while seeing the two avatars on stage together.


Thanks!

Ivy, I have come across a service that claims to be able to do just that. Ninjam is the one to look into though I haven't tried it yet. Personally I'm looking for a bassist & drummer to collaborate with to form a 3-piece prog/space/fusion combo.

If you don't care about fidelity, you can use something like Skype to create a conference call. We've done multi-DJ spots like that before. Getting the host machine's config right can be a bit of a trial but it's fairly stable once working.

As for mixing two seperate streams together for higher quality, I couldn't say. Not my area of expertise.

Thanks Alazarin!

I will be checking that site out! If it can do a decent job of producing good sound that is actually syncronized, it has a good life ahead of it.

Fenrir,
I was wondering if a conference call type of thing would work. I have never used Skype, so my experience is very limited there. Fidelity would be important, since singing is involved. I am not sure how well a telephone conference call would be able to produce multiple voices at the same time. In multi-DJ events, do the different DJs speak at the same time? If so, do the voices blend in the final output or does one over-ride the other?

I am approaching this as a medium for a quartet to combine voices and perform, so voices are the most important thing for me. But if it works with voices, it should work with any combo group. Might be a bit hard to get an orchestra up and running, but for club situations it could be very good.

Hey Chronic! Nice to see you on the forums too. Specifically that was a piano made by Cubey Terra.

I find the latency in SL makes it difficult to get really tight, fast-moving performances. I had to preload the sounds and really forsee my steps.

I'm all for polyphony too.

I have been thinking this one over a lot and have run it by a few musicians in SL. Ninjam is kinda cool, but it's loop-based and I don't think it's what you are looking for if you plan on doing songs with vocals and stuff. It is good for jamming with repetitive riffs, but not for performing the way we would want to in SL. If Alazarin is doing spacey jam-rock without a lot of changes and with no vocals, then this might be the software to check out in that case.

The idea I have is not *true* jamming, as one musician would not be able to hear the other one. But it would get rid of the problem with latency that currently plagues the internet.

Here is an example of my idea:

Musician 1 plays acoustic guitar and sings the lead vocals, and streams the output to Musician 2. Musician 2 takes Musician 1's output and plays piano and sings harmonies over top, streaming their output to SL via a relay or their own Shoutcast server. Musician 1 does not hear Musician 2 in realtime, but the outcome is that the audience hears both of them. There would be a substantial amount of lag from the time Musician 1 played a note until the time that the audience would hear it, but no one would know that once the song was underway. The audio could be kept at a 128k (or thereabouts) stream for quality sound. It would take some testing and tweaking to ensure that the levels were correct, but this could be done in an empty club with the two musicians and another listener with a good ear.

I would someday love to use this technique to do harmonies with a few of the live performers in SL. I am not quite sure how it could be set up, but someone who is good with coding could likely write a little app to help out in no time at all.

This is just fine for spoken stuff, but when it gets down to musicians playing instruments and singing together, it's just not feasible at any fidelity. Even the tiniest bit of lag (and with Skype, there will be) will be enough to make the performance sound incredibly awkward.

Thank you! Now for DJing can you just play music on your PC or not? I take it that setup you have us for live stuff? What would you need for DJing.

I would still like to know more stuff on: Building,Making items,Scripter,Animator and a Fashion Designer stuff like that.

Thanks,
Spen

Hey Spen,

There is a ton of useful information here: http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/ - much more than any of us could every type out in this thread.

Here is an article about adding streaming music to your land: http://secondlife.com/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=How+do+I+add+streaming+music+to+my+land%3F