Ugh, I just typed a mega comment, but it disappeared when I hit send. Anyway, I’m not going to redo it again, so I just wanted to say great blog! Better than http://google.com! 
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Rats that was weird. I just wrote an extremely long response but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t show up. Sigh well I’m not writing all that again. Anyways, just wanted to say fantastic blog!…
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Slavoj Zizek speaks at Liberty Square October 9 2011This is a transcript of Zizek’s peach at Liberty Square today. I’m putting it up because it is important and because I could not find a transcript elsewhere. THe speach has been recorded but without a microphone s the crowd repeats Zizek’s words and it can be hard to hear. Slavoj Zizek addresses the crowd gathered at Liberty Square – October 9th 2011 … 2008 financial crash – more hard earned private property was destroyed than if all of use here were to be destroying it night and day for weeks. They tell you we are dreamers. The true dreamers are those who think that things can go on indefinately the way they are. We are not dreamers, we are awaking from a dream that is turning into a nightmare. We are not destroying anything, we are only witnessing how the system is destroying itself. We all know the classic scenes form cartoons – the cat reaches a precipice but it goes on walking, ignoring the fact that there is nothing beneath it. Only when it looks down and notices it, it falls down. this is what we are doing here. We are telling the guys there on wall st, “hey, look down”. In April 2011 the chineze government prohibited, on TV, in films and in novels, all stories that contained alternate reality or time travel. This is a good sign for China. If people still dream about alternatives, you have to prohibit the dream. Here we don’t think of prohibition, because the ruling system has even supressed our capacity to dream. Look at the movies we see all the time. It’s easy to imagine the end of the world, an asteroid destroying all life and so on, but you cannot imagine the end of capitalism. So what are we doing here? Let me tell you a wonderful old joke from communist times: A guy was sent from East Germany to work in SIberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors so he told his freinds “lets establish a code- If a letter you get form me is written in blue ink, it is true, what I say. If it is written in red ink, it is false”. After a month his freinds got a first letter. It says, in this letter “Everything is wonderful here. The stores are full of good food, the movie theatres show good films from the west, apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink”. This is how we live. We have all the freedoms we want, but what we are mising is red ink – the language to articulate our non-freedom. The was we are taught to speak about freedom, war and terror and so on, falsifies freedom. And this is what you are doing here – you are giving all of us red ink. There is a danger. Don’t fall in love with yourselves. We have a nice time here, but remember carnivals come cheap. What matters is the day after, when we will have to return to normal life. Will there be any changes then? I don’t want you to remember these days – you know, like “oh we were young, it was beautiful” – remember what our basic message is – we are allowed to think about alternatives, the tabu is broken, we do not live in the best possible way. But there is a long road ahead. There are truly difficult questions that confront us. We know what we dont want, but what do we want. What social organization can replace capitalism? What type of new leaders do we want? Remember – the problem is not corruption or greed, the problem is the system that pushes you to be corrupt. Beware not only of the enemies, but also of the false freinds who are already working to dilute this process in the same way you get coffee without caffine, beer without alcohol, icecream without fat. They will try this into a harmless moral process – a decafinated process. But the reason we are here is that we have enough of the world where to recycle coke cans, or to buy a starbucks cappucino where one percent goes to the worlds starving children, is enough to make us feel good. After outsourcing work and tourture, after marriaga agencies are outsourcing even our lovelife, daily, we can see that for a long time, we allowed our political engagement also to be outsourced. We want it back. - We are not communists. If communism means the system that collapsed in 1990, remember that today those communists are the most efficient ruthless capitalists. In China today we have capitalism that is even more dynamic than your american capitalism, but doesnt need democracy, which means, when you criticize capitalms, don’t allow yourselves to be blackmailed that you are against democracy. The marriage between democracy between democracy and capitalism is over. The change is posible. How? What do we consider today posible? Just follow the media. On the one hand, in technology and sexuality, everything seems to be possible. You ca travel to the moon, you can become immortal by bilogenetics, you can have sex with animals, or whatever – but look at the feilds of society and economy, therem almost everything is considered impossible. You want to raise taxes a little bit for the rich – they tell you its impossible, we will lose competitivity. You want more money for health care? They tell you “impossible, this means totalitarian state”. Is something wrong in the world, where you are promised to be immortal but cannot spend a little bit more for healthcare. Maybe we have to set our priorities straight here. We don’t want higher standards of living, we want better standards of living. The only sense in which we are communists, is that we care for the commons. The commons of nature, the commons of what is privatized by intellectual property, the commons of biogenetics. For this, and only for this, we should fight. Communism failed absolutely, but the problems of the commons are here. they are telling you we are non americans here, but the conservative fundamentalists who claim they are really american have to be reminded of something. What is christianity? It is the holy spirit. What is the holy spirit? Its an egalitarian community of believers who are linked by love for each other, and who only have their own freedom and responsibility to do it. In this sense, the holy spirit is here now, and down there on wallstreet, there are beggars who are workshiping blasphemous idols, so all we need is patience. The only thing I am afraid of is that we will, at some day we will just go home, then we will meet once a year, drinking beer and nostaligically remembering what a nice time we had here. Promise ourselves that this will not be the case. We will go on – you know that people often desire something, but do not really want it. Dont be afraid to really want what you desire. Thankyou very much.
Posted in Politics / Philosophy, Uncategorized
Tagged abbusters, ad, anto capitalism, communism, lierty square, occupy wall street, october 9, ows, philosophy, politics, slavoj zizek, socialism, speach, zizeck
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One Response to Slavoj Zizek speaks at Liberty Square October 9 2011Leave a ReplyThe Drums of SatanAfter the last surveys I sent out asking you guys what you wanted in your newsletters, one of the things you guys asked for was “random tales from my life”. I kinda sidled over that request for a while, partly cos chosing randomness is a bit of a contradiction, but mainly, cos I wasn’t sure what to write about. Having had a few letters urging me to please do it anyway, I decided the best thing to do would be to relate the non music related stuff that comes up in conversation for me at odd points in the week. “The Drums of Satan” It happens on New Zealand’s west coast, a ruggedly beautiful place where the mountains plunge straight into an ocean that hurls itself onto talons of rock, ripping itself into foam. It happens where I grew up, though some time after me and my family had all moved on, in a place called Tauranga Bay, where the sea roars out its rage at the coast.
Tauranga bay is half an hours drive out of Westport, which is three hours drive throgh a mountain range and one-lane roads, from anyplace civilized. I wanted to show my then-partner what this place I had come from was like – probably because I thought it explained something, thought what that something might be, I have yet to figure out. In a rusty old holden station wagon, whose column shift screetched in fear when you so much as touched it, I drove the poor man, whose name wasn’t Ben but will be for this story, into the depths of nowhere – to the only place left in the country where one-lane bridges still share with trains, and where the locals point and laugh if you drive over at the wrong time of day cos everyone knows that’s when the good train comes through from the south.
We arrived late at night, only to find the nearest campsite wasn’t near at all, and was, in any case full. When we got to the shore, “no camping” signs poked up from the ground ike middle fingers, jeering. We took a side road; drove the car over shuddering, unsealed chip, hunting for a likely looking place. With so little space between earth and sea, we hit the end of the road before finding anything suitable. We stopped and killed the lights. Sea booming in our ears. There seemed to be a broad sort of area to one side of where the road ended, where the ground flattened out between two hills. A picnic table was balanced there with rocks underneath the foot that was falling away into soggy ground. “What the fuck is that?” (we use the f word for anything and everything down under). That was the first thing I heard before yanking out my earplugs to hear what the problem was. All around us there was drumming. It would rise up on one side, deep and irregular and loud, before sinking back into the sound of the far off sea, and then rising up again someplace else nearby. It was eerie and other worldly, and definitely not human. I went with my eyes shut. I didnt want to see ANYTHING, cos if I did, I would be forced to believe mumbo jumbo. The slick cool of the grass on my feet didnt sooth me, normal as it was – my brain sent me images of bloodied skins lying piled up upon one another; of the slick dead tongues of murder victems taken out here by mad pagan locals on a dark night, whose ghosts lingered here forever. Eventally I realised my own imagination was far more horrendous than anything real life could offer, and I opened my eyes. In the lighter black of the road, the car sagged on its haunches, unscathed and not crawling with deamons. The moon was half. The booming hadnt stopped though, and seemed to come from several directions at once. I took a few steps toward the bushes near the tent – leaping back and letting out a yip as something skittered off into the undergrowth. The booming continued. There was nothing to see but shadow on shadow, and when something dark moved off across the corner of my eye I got back into the tent as fast as I could, lest I see anything “ghostly”. The sun comes up early on a clear day in summer. By 7am we had crawled from the tent, now heating up and baking us inside it. Ligaments cracked as I tried to realign my body with gravity, stretching as Ben headed over to the car to get the cooker. He stopped by a large plackard At this point I would like to thank the New Zealand department of Conservation for its informative sign that let us know that we were not insane, and that the word was still completely devoid of ghosts, miracles or wonders, and that besides that, wekas (flightless, curious, chicken-sized birds, that look a lot like Kiwis if you dont happen to ever have seen a kiwi) bred at the exact time of year we had decided to camp. These birds, said the sign, made a deep booming noise with their throat, to announce their readiness to screw to potential sexual partners. The sound, the placard went on could be “surprisingly loud”, but was not often heard by people as the birds were “easily put off” their mating rituals.
As if on cue, several of them appeared, as they actually do all the time on the west coast. They lunged about, gawky and decidedly unfrightening, near the boot of the car. One of them jumped into the open boot and made off with a slice of bread.
Posted in camping stories, random tales from my life
Tagged camping, coastal highway, holiday, karamea, new zealand, paparoa, punakaiki, tent, tentin, tramping, weka, west coast, westport
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Part 5 – Promoting Your Shows“if you book them, they will come” – Wayne’s World. Wouldn’t it be great if that was the case! Sadly, in Second Life, as with normal gigs in the terrestrial world, there are literally hundreds of events going on at once, and unless you can inform people that you are among those hundreds, the chances of them stumbling accross you are minimal. Just like radio, posters, magazines and gig guides in the offline world, the online world has its own means of keeping people informed of what’s going on. The absolutely vital two are listings in the “live events” log which people use to see who is playing, and group notices. If you have booked a show, you need to insist that the venue list you in live events. The venue owners mentioned in the last blog entry all do this because they are professional and reliable. You will need to give them a short, snappy description of what you do so they can use it in thier own promotional activties too. Be wary of the venue who does not list you in live events. If they “forget” twice in a row, or three times in total, don’t play there again. It means they don’t care about pulling a crowd. THE FIRST TWO TOOLS OF PROMO Promotional necessity two is “group notices”. Second Life has groups for all interest areas, and music is a massive interest area. Membership is almost always totally free, and some groups have thousands of members. If you belong to that group and have “send rights” you can send out promotional notices to that pool of a thousand people. Everyone in SL is allowed to belong to 25 groups, and good venues often have their own groups which they will send promotional material too, as well as other notices too, but there are limits in some groups that restrict venue owners and non musicians from posting. That’s why you need to join some of these groups yourself. That way you can cover groups the venue owner cannot. Did I mention that membership in just about all of these groups is free? FREE, yes. It’s like getting posters and radio done for nothing. It’s the great thing about online shows – there are no overheads. There is just the massive time investment in finding out how things are done, but once you do, you’re set. FINDING AND JOINING GROUPS Firstoff, what kind of music do you play? I you play slash-god thrash metal, you will want to look in the search for interest groups that might be into what you do. “Metal Fans”, “Sounds of Satan” or somesuch. Type a keyword into the search box (top right) such as “metal” and when the results come up, read through them. Some will be groups associated with a particular club or artist. You can’t advertise your own stuff there as it is bad form. You need to find an interest group to post to, such as “metal music enthusiasts” (I don’t know if that exists by the way, but let me know if it does!). The easiest way I have found for getting groups is to enter the words “live music”. A number of groups come up under that such as “Live Music Twentyfour”, “Live Music in the AM” (great if you play euro or australasion times) and “Live Music Enthusiasts”. Once you find these groups in search, click on them and you will get extra info displayed in the right hand panel. Near the top right will be a link to “join”, which you should click. You then need to look who the group founder is, and send them an IM saying you are a live musician, and you would like “post” rights, so you can send notices. Occasionally, a group has post rights for any member so you dont need to do this, but most require you to be a musician to post, so IMing is necessary. As starters for ten, these are some good general interest music groups to join: Music Afficiandos Live Music Twentyfour Live Music in the AM Music Not Politics (nb: snob rating of ten out of ten here. They are very very clicky, old school in her tastes, and finicky about who they give post rights to. I still don’t have them, but as a member you can still type direct in the chat, and thats a useful tool too, which I will talk about in a sec). Music Hall of Fame Live Music Enthusiasts GETTING STARTED WITH GROUP NOTICES Once you have joined, and sent an IM there are two ways to send out notices. If you DONT have post permissions, you can’t do something called “blue notices” (a name from the viewer one days when such notices came up as an invasive, massive blue notice. Keep in mind that up to 70% of people STILL have this viewer) but you CAN still do group chat notices. While you are waiting for post permissions, you should do this for all the groups you are part of. Here is how: On the right hand side of your screen is the line of icons – suitcase, globe thing, t-shirt, and a person shaped icon. Click on the person shaped icon. It will fold out info into the right hand area of your screen, usually it defaults to your freinds list. Look to the top right of this area, there is a tab called “groups”. Click on that. That is where the groups you are part of are listed. Double click on any of those groups. It will open a box where in the left hand side, all those people currently online are listed. In the right, what they are saying. You need to type a message, short and sweet, into that box. The generally accepted format is: time name @ venue, short description, sURL. eg 3AM JordanReyne Deezul @ the Ruins, industrial-tinged folk rock, http://slurl.com/secondlife/The%20Ruins/65/123/52 nb: the sURL will come out looking shorter once you hit post. To FIND the sURL of the place you are playing, you can do one of two things. The easiest at this stage is to type the name of the venue into search, click on it for more info, then click again on the bottom of that info, where it says “map”, let the map open, and then click the button on the bottom right that says “copy sURL to clipboard”. If you have a landmark for the venue, you can also find the sURL by clicking on the landmark and then map etc. You should send out group notices no earlier than half an hour before a show. BLUE/BIG NOTICES “Blue” notices (aka big notices). Once you get permission to send this kind of notice to a group, make sure you do. Again, click on teh person icon, then groups tab, then click once on the group you want to send to. To the right of the group name a smal arrow will appear, click on that. The group info will now fill that right hand portion of your screen. Towards the bottom, there will be a button that says “notices”. If it is greyed out, you may not have permission to send yet. If it isnt, you do. Click on it. Here there are 3 vital bits of info. One, the heading. The format is time, name, @ venue. eg. 3AM JordanReyne Deezul @ the Ruins. In the bigger space underneath you get to write your blurb. eg. Industrial-tinged folk rock from the edges of the earth. A combination of celtic melody, 19th century factory sounds, and guitars in strange and ancient tunings. Under that part, is another long empty box. here you need to link the landmark for your venue. To do that, click the button under it that says “inventory”. That will bring up a window on the far left usually. type the name of the venue in the top blank space of that window. The landmark should appear in a list. You need to drag it into the space under the text you just wrote in the group window. When you have done that successfully, text will appear in that window yu dragged it into. You can now hit “send” (below, on the right). Caveats: Joining and posting to groups takes a while to get used to and a while to get right. There are plenty of people out there who will be rude if you dont follow the protocols, but hey, you are learning, so ignore them. If you follow the formats above you should be ok. NEXT EPISODE The next episode is about the very important task of making your OWN group, to get people to join when you play. This is a way of building up your own following and will become the most important group of all to deal with. In the meantime, happy joining! Let me know if you find and interesting groups on your way.
Posted in what you need to play music online
Tagged gig promotion, how to make music online, howto, internet shows, live gigs online, live online performance, live shows, making music in second life, making music online, music, music promotion, music promotion online, online, online performance promotion, promotion, second life
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2 Responses to Part 5 – Promoting Your Shows
Leave a ReplyPart 3 – Instruments and AnimationsDo you have your stream yet? If you ordered one through Trax you should have gotten a notecard from Bones that has the stream details. Click on your inventory to find it – first click on the inventory tab to open the inventory interface, then on the suitcase-shaped icon. Browse to a folder called “notecards” or enter the word “trax” into the blank space at the top of your inventory tab. The notecard should show up as a result. Even if you don’t yet have your stream sorted, the step of buying an instrument and animations can be taken while you wait. 1) Instruments: There are many places to go to find musicial instruments and if time is not limited you can just type “musical instrument” or “guitar” or “piano” into the search at the top right hand side of the screen, then click on a result that seems likely to teleport there. A one-stop option is GCD Musical Instruments which sells instruments that have their own animations. Clicking on it now will get you prompted to log into SL, and then take you there. Have a look around. The store is huge and many of the instruments are up high. You can either tilt your view by holding down the “alt” tab and moving your mouse to adjust your avatars perspective, or you can fly up to look. Want to fly? On the bottom middle of the screen is a button that says “move”. The icon with the outstretched arms will make you fly. You can use the underlined “up” arrow to increase your altitude. To buy an item, right click and hit “pay”. The item will then be transferred into your inventory. You can retrieve it by clicking the inventory button, then clicking on the suitcase shaped icon, and then on the “recent items” tab at the top. The instrument should be in there. You can right click on it and select “wear” and it will appear on your avatar. To take it off, right click on the instrument itself and click “detatch”. Caveats: some instruments, depending where you buy, come packaged. You will notice this because when you click “wear” you will appear to be wearing a box. Boxes need to be unpacked before you can wear the contents, so right click on the box and select “detatch” to return it to your inventory. Locate it again inside your inventory, left click on it, and drag in onto a space on the floor in front of your avatar. The box should not appear on the floor. Click on it (or right click) and it should give you the option “unpack”. Click on that, and the individual items should be unpacked into your inventory. You should then click on the box again and select “take” to remove it from the floor. Check your inventory, suitcase, recent items again and you should see individual items there. The box won’t appear when you drag it to the floor? Sometimes you will get a notice that says “you canot rez items here” or similar. This is a pain, but there is a way around it: you need to teleport to a place where rezzing is allowed. One such place is Bentham Forest, a haunted forest with wonderful sounds that allows you to rez objects. Teleport there, move off the landing area and find a clear space on the ground to repeat the above steps. 2) Animations: Your guitar, bass, piano or drums may come with animations. Many do. When you wear your instrument you will notice as it will animate your avatar. You can right click on the instrument itself to see the animation options. One of the options is always “stop” and there are usually other animations in the list to choose from. If you are happy with them then all is good. If not, you need to teleport over to Ministry of Motion and find an animation. Again, the place is huge, and it takes a while for the visuals to load, but once it does you should see big signs hanging in the air to guide you. The circular mini-stages allow you to try out the animations. To use them, right click on the mini-stage and select “sit here”. If you like an animation, again, just right click on the animation name and select “buy”. It will be transferred to your inventory. To find it click on the suitcase icon, then browse to the “animations” folder. To use it, double click on the name and it will open a small grey window to the top right of your screen that has two buttons, “play inworld” and “play locally”. One of these will animate your avatar. Caveat: the animations are heavily and rather ridicuously gendered. It can take a long time to find one that isn’t insipidly feminine or overbearingly macho. Have patience, or the courage to just go for one not intended for your gender. It’s a virtual universe and the polarization of the sexes is an unneccesary evil! Part 4 will be about places to play shows and the pros and cons of approaching venue owners. ‘Til then! 8 Responses to Part 3 – Instruments and Animations
Leave a ReplyPart 2 – Setting up for Live Shows in Second LifeHaving sorted out the gear you need to get your sound into your computer (part 1) you are now ready to find a world / environment / website where you can share that sound with an audience. This is entry is about signing up to Second Life, an online environment with over 15 million registered users and a huge live music scene. Compared to playing on Ustream or StreamJam, the learning curve for playing in Second Life is very steep indeed so, before you even start, remember not to panic. Personally, I am pretty good at panicking and tore my hair trying to figure this stuff out for myself, and I would not have gotten anywhere if I hadn’t had help from other musicians. That’s why it seemed like a good idea to write this down as a guide. 1) Sign up to Second Life. This part is fairly easy. Head over to Second Life.com and choose a first name. You might want to use your full stage name as a first name here, as you have no control over your last name, and must choose from a list of suggestions. 2) Activate your account. If you haven’t downloaded the Second Life software yet, do it now and install it. When you receive your email asking you to activate your account, click on the link in it (it should open Second Life for you, which looks like the image below) and log into your Second Life account. This will activate it.
3) Once you have activated your account, you will need to set up your avatar with some funds. There are several things you need to set yourself up to play live that will cost money, thought they are far from expensive (it will cost you a maximum of 20 US$). Depending on where you are in the world, there are different websites set up to do this. In the USA you can head to Crossworld Exchange and in the EU head to Eldexchange (if you live somewhere else check in the Second Life Wiki). Log out of Second Life and browse to the appropriate one. You can buy Linden Dollars with either a credit card or paypal. I recommend paypal becuase once you start to earn money, you will need to use PayPal to cash out. 4) Buying a stream. Once your avatar has some funds, log back into Second Life. Your next mission is to buy something called a “stream”. A steam is like a broadcast frequency that you own. When you have a show, the venue owner will ask you for your stream details and ensure that the venue is tuned into your stream so that any avatars who are there can hear you. There are a lot of people who sell streams in Second Life but the ones I can recommend are sold through Trax, run by Bones Writer. Bones sells streams bundled with something called a “booth” at the Trax location. A booth is essentially a place to advertise – where you can put your image and music up for the people who wander through Trax to visit. You don’t need to worry to much about the details as the key thing is to buy a space so that you can get the stream that comes with it. 5) Getting to Trax. At the top right-hand side of the interface of Second Life is a box called, “search”. Type “Trax” in there. A window will pop up with your search results. The right one is called “Trax live Music Resource Centre”. Click on it and it should display extra information, one of which is a pale blue button that says “teleport”. Click on it and you will be teleported there. If you run into trouble, ensure you are logged into SL and click on this link secondlife://Trax/109/127/27
Once at Trax, you will see a series of crescent-formed booths like the image above, most of which have a picture in them. You need to find an empty booth – one with no picture and a white and yellow box inside it on the floor instead. Once you have found such a booth, right click on the boy and select “pay”. This will purchase a booth for you. NOTE: this does NOT purchase your stream. To get the stream you need to then send an IM to Bones asking him to sell you a stream as part of the bundle deal he has. To do this, go to the top right hand side of the screen again and type in “Bones Writer” (click on the “people” tab if required.) Bone’s profile should come up; click on it and more options will appear. One is a blue button that says “IM”. Click on it and a window will open. This is where you write to get hold of Bones. Type in that you have just purchased a booth and would like to purchase a stream from him. It helps to send him your email too as he will need your image and mp3s for the booth. Once Bones gets back to you, he will ask for more money for a stream. Be assured that even with the booth cost his streams are one of the cheapest options for the highest reliability. You will need to log into Second Life and pay Bones, then you will get a notecard from him with your stream information. It will have username, password, and stream address. To make use of it, you will need a bit of very simple software called “Butt”. You will need the notecard to set this up. 6. Download Butt from http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Audio/butt.shtml and install. Once installed you need to open the software and click on the tab that says “settings”, then, on the grey window that appears, click on “main”. You should now see something like the image below. Half way down the window is a button called “add”. Click on it. In “name” you can enter whatever you want. In address you will need to copy the address that came in the information that is written in the notecard Bones delivered you. The port and password will also be on this notecard and you need to enter them and click “add”. Close the window and close Butt. It will ask if you want to save your settings. Click yes.
7. Now, you need to find a place to test your stream and ensure you have entered the stream details properly. This is the challenging part. You will need to meet or find someone who owns some land or a venue. This is easier than you might think. Using the search again, click on the “events” tab. Find a live show, or even DJs, and teleport to it. People will say hello and chat. Second Life is very friendly and helpful and getting to talk to musicians or venue owners, you will find someone to help. You can send me an IM at jordanreyne deezul if you see me online and I can put you onto someone who can help. Once you find someone, you will need them to be there while you test the stream. They will ask for your stream address. You will need to press “play” (the white triangle) on your Butt Software – this starts your broadcast, and because the land owner / venue owner is tuning into that stream address, they can tell you if they hear it. When you press play, if the Butt software tells you you are connected, people tuned in should hear it (beware there will be a lag). If the software fails to connect, the chances are that you have entered the address or port wrong in Butt’s settings. You will need to press “settings” again, then edit, and check the address. Sometimes you need to tack the port on the end of the address as well as in the “port” field. Also you may need to use the number version of the address instead of the word one. Butt is a little idiosyncratic. Once you get the stream working, you are ready to do shows, more or less. You will look more sane with a guitar so the next installment will delve into the realm of shopping for a guitar and animations, and hunting out gigs at venues. Part 2 is a very tricky part and I am sure to have left things out, so feel free to comment or email me if you have questions. ‘Til part 3! 12 Responses to Part 2 – Setting up for Live Shows in Second Life
Leave a ReplyPart 1 – GearBefore you can think about transmitting your sound out into cyberspace, you need to sort out the first part of the signal chain – the part that gets your voice/ sample/ guitar / band into your computer. There are two key pieces of gear to think about here, the soundcard/ audio interface and the mixing desk, but you may not need both. Ingredient 1: a good soundcard/ audio interface. Most computers come with soundcards that aren’t up to live performance if used on their own. Unless you own a mixing desk (in which case you may be able to jump straight to “ingredient 2″) you are going to need to choose an external soundcard that suits your setup needs. The first thing to think about when chosing a soundcard is how many instruments make up your live show. If it’s just you and your guitar, 2 channels is all you need. If you are intending to add extras or play with a band you can either choose a card with more inputs OR a simple 2-input card to be used in combination with a mixing desk. I use an m-audio fast track ultra soundcard, which has 4 inputs (an extra one for my loop machine and sampler).
If you only need the two imputs, or intend to get a mixing desk, something like the M-Audio Fastrack Pro (shown above) is a good choice and comes with 2 inputs and is available for around 155 euro. The Presonus AudioBox is another low cost option, and in both cases www.thomann.de is about the best place to order these- if you have a bigger budget, other recommendable brands incluce MOTU, Digidesign, and Native Instruments. For the guitar and vocal combo, this may be all you need. Install the soundcard, plug in the USB cable to your PC, plug in your guitar and mic, and you are done with step one of the signal chain. If you are a band, or you want extras like effects, then go onto ingredient 2 below. Ingredient 2. The mixing desk. If you have a mixing desk with good preamps, you can often take a line out of the desk straight into your computer. Certainly there are people that do this and come out with a good sound. If you have a 2 channel soundcard and more than 2 inputs, then a mixing desk is a good workaround. It is also a good option if you want effects, because many mixing desks come with onboard effects. Simply plug your instrumments into the desk, and take two lines out from the desk output, pluging one into the left, and one into the right channel of the soundcard. The number of channels you need will depend on how many instruments you want to use. If you are getting a mixing desk because you need effects, consider the Behringer Xenyx FX series. I use a Behringer Xenyx 1202 FX (shown below) and find the reverbs on there to be adequate for vocals and guitar.
Hopefully, having read this, you have decided on what you need: A: just a soundard, B: just a mixing desk or, C: both. Please feel free to comment below or ask questions. There will be loads of you out there too with more helpful advice too, so we’d love to hear from you! 2 Responses to Part 1 – Gear
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