Johnny & the Sea – or how to make a 6 minute animation, even though it’s a mad idea.Out-takes, gossip, drama and mysterious accidents at sea, this post is all about the behind the scene stuff that goes on in making a video. So if you are a musician and have wondered how to go about getting a video made, this post is for you. If you are a filmmaker, you’ll enjoy part two which is where the people who actually did the hard work present the same project from their perspective. The crew: Director: Eloise Coveny & Jonathan Lamb, Music & Story: yours truly, Compositing/editing: Jonathan Lamb, Ghost Ship Concept Art: Jacob Grossman, Character Art: Tristan Alarcon, Figurehead animation/Whale/2D assets: Billie Carroll, Figurehead Pre-vis Model: Sean Winchester, Figurehead Modelling: Leon Woud, Sail Dynamics: Jason Wong, Smoke Dynamics: Richard Chang, Additional Animation: Nicholas Plaire, Tentacle Animation: Aksh Malik, Ship 3D Model/Figurehead Lighting/Render: Simon Heath, Additional Sky Photography by Aleksander Sakowski. The cast:
The first thing you may notice is that one of those lists is massively longer than the other, which only goes to show how many man hours go into a minute of animation. In fact, when the project began – with my naively asking an incredibly talented filmaker, Eloise Coveny, “How many weeks does it take to make a 6 minute animation?”, the next person on board, Jono Lamb, gave us our answer with a smile in his skype-beamed voice – it was a mad idea. Phase One – “OK, is there any way we can make this a bit shorter”? In truth, my demands were even madder than first thought. “Johnny & the Sea” was over 6 minutes 20 when I skyped with Eloise and Jono using a clunky old laptop that frozen Hamburg January. When told how much work would be needed, we cut fades, bars and beats, anything we could in the parts where hoped no one would notice Phase Two – the story This was the part that would have cost thousands in phone bills if we had been doing it in the 90s. Thank the lord for the net and it’s facilitatory role in projects that span numerous timezones. It was also the part where I got to see that even the most talented visual artists draw stickfigures like the rest of us when in a hurry. Those stick figures made up something called an animatic (so proud I now know some tech words in film now), which showed us all what happened when, in relation to the music and formed the backbone of the planning and animation. You’d be amazed how a buch of stick figures could cause such excitement. At this point in the process, we already had a rough idea of the characters and events – we had a ghost ship, grim factories, a sea adventure, a marriage and a mysterious possible death. We could already talk about weather that worked, when it should happen in relation to the music, and if those events properly represented the themes in the song, and so on. We dealt with the characters chronologically, starting with the ship. This is where the balancing act between facts, folklore, looking good on screen, and making life as painless for the animators as posible began. We wanted a dark, slightly steampunk look and feel to the video, without going too far in that direction (my music is really only on the fringes of steampunk in that it has lots of steam tech sounds). Here is some of the Ghost Ship concept art, by Jacob Grossman, with notes that show how designs are negotiated.
History, Herstory
The very talented Tristan Alarcon came up with the images above, and all the character designs for tha tmatter. The middle illustration became the obvious choice because of the real Johnny’s working class background and youth. In the more folkloric song, he refuses to conform to societal expectation, and this is made more relatable by his bad lot. In terms of story structure, his broke circumstance is the crucible that makes him act – answering the call of adventure.
Johnny’s not having a face is not some attempt at creepy horror stuff, rather, the process of character design was a sort of honing in process, starting with the framework of the story, moving into the form of Johnny. Greater detail came at each iteration and here were the ideas our character designer, Tristan, came up with:
Enter Johnny’s wife, Mary. As the young bride of an out of work seafarer, she needed to look somewhat broke too, so we chose the simpler, poorer looking woman rather than the circled one shown below:
Mary actually comes into her own in the video that follows – “A Woman Scorned” – but for this video she really only needed to appear at the end, when Johnny shatters her world by walking out into the ocean. The representation of this death was a tricky aspect of the video and proof that compromise has to happen at all stages. With me being the more bloodthirsty member of the team, there were cries of “But I need to see that he actually drowns!”. Instead of hitting people over the head with that fact though, the team managed to work through my pigheadedness on matters of death and gore, and introduce me to the power of the more open ending, where Johnny walks out into the sea, and then, when the shot moves back to him, he simply isn’t there. Phase Three – the hardest part This is the part where I actually got to be blissfully ignorant. With the overview, concept and character descicions worked out between us, the real work started. Eloise and Jono will enlighten us in the post that follows too, which is most wonderful of them, but for now, take a look back at the list of the crew. Its over 12 people, and with all of them working, full time, following the animatic, we only just managed to get the video out in the 3 months we had. Those guys are no slackers either, and as with so much in the music world, there were tenderhook moments regarding plans and release dates. Despite the huge scope of the project though, thy delivered as heroically as Johnny on his ship, and the adventure of seeing how poeple would enjoy it, started.
As a musician, it is a really special thing to work with visual artists whose ideas and ability produce a thing one can feel proud of. I am lucky enough to have worked with a great team – several great teams – and a lot of talented people who like sharing ideas as much as I do. That is really the key: communication, and finding people with passion and vision. One you find them, hope that you can work with them again! Eloise, who also brought us the video for “the Proximty of Death”, will be working on the next video from the upcoming album too – Mary’s song “A Woman Scorned”. Keep your eyes peeled for the story behing that too as it is going to be fantastic. Next post – Part Two, the teams take on the same process, written by Jonathan Lamb (co Director). Tune in for extra tech insights, further opinions pertaining to the madness of artists, and the HD version of the video itself!
Posted in New music, folklore, making a music video
Tagged adventure, animation, celtic folk music, folklore, galleon, ghost ship, herstory, history, howto, industrial revolution, insane projects, legend, music video, new zealand, pirate, sea shanty, video
Leave a comment
Ghost Ships, Beer, and the Colour OrangeThis week the hunt for strange tales and historical oddities took me to a UK brewery called Adnams. Being a Kiwi, I am not up with the play on the who’s who of UK breweries, but these guys caught my eye because of a beer called “Ghost Ship”. Anything with a name like that deserves a closer look, in my opinion, and added to that, Adnams are in Suffolk, where around fifty percent of the people I know in this country originate from for some mysterious reason. Not one to shy away from mystery I imposed on one of my aforementioned freinds saying there was beer in it for him, and tales of old sea things. We ventured forth, out to the coast and a town called Southwold. There, we were met with an incredible blend of cyber-eco tech and historical points of interest. Here are some of the cyber-eco tech things (beware, if you do not like the colour orange, look away now). To me they looked a lot like something out of 20,000 leagues under the sea, which was already a ten out of ten start in terms of stories.
Onto the tales of ghostly things, and disappearing towns. It turns out that Adnams are about as intruiged by old stories as I am. “Ghost Ship” was a name given to their latest beer, inspired by a haunted pub in Walberswick called “The Bell” where Goerge Orwell was reported to have seen a ghost. The pub itself still stands and serves beer to this day (who is game to drink there after dark and walk home alone? Any takers?). Walberswick’s shore is also famous for being host to untold wrecks from smuggler ships as well as to the sunken remains of an entire town, Dunwich, which was swallowed by the sea in 1286, as so much of the east coast continues to be. And then there is the crocodile story. Adnams itself was founded by Ernest Adnams and his brother George (shown in the first picture below, though they are hard to see and I don’t know which one is which). George went on a treck to Africa shortly after founding the brewery with his brother, and was eaten by a crocodile.
All in all, it was a day full of very cool old tales, rather amazing futuristic, green technology with some great beer and sea air in between.
Posted in New music, folklore
Tagged adnams, adnams beer, beer, brewery, celtic, celtic folk music, female voice, folk music, folklore, galleon, ghost ship, ghosts, irish folk music, legend, southwold, suffolk
Leave a comment
Todays Album Release – re-structured ;)New Plans! As you guys know, Children of a Factory Nation exists entirely thanks to the incredible support of its fans. If it had not been for your efforts during the IndieGoGo fundraiser earlier this year, the album may never have been finished – and everything that has occurred since then may never have happened. Since relocating to the UK, some third parties have expressed commercial interest expressed in the album. As a result, we are restructuring its release schedule to focus on meeting a broader audience. It also means that beginning today and over the next several months we will be releasing a series of EPs to help shop these songs to the media. You guys who have already pre-ordered the CD before today are now members of a very exclusive club I will keep you posted, and for today, Johnny & the Sea goes on sale officially (for thoseof you who didn’t grab it when the CD came out for its one week window!). The video is below and we hope you enjoy it!
Posted in New music, folklore
Tagged celtic folk music, folk music, folk rock, ghost ship, ghosts, herstory, history, industrial revolution, legend, local history, maritime, new music, new release, united kingdom
Leave a comment
Johnny & the Sea – first single from the upcoming AlbumIt was 5:30 am, and all I could hear was the sound of ticking clockwork and turning steel wheels. All around were people dressed in corsets, top hats and impossible machinery. They smoked and chatted and drank black tea until it was time for the music to start. A long time was spent oggling – scanning the cut of skirts and frilled blouses, and the curious collections of moving gadgetry hidden under translucent evening attire. Today it was an honour and a pleasure to celebrate the upcoming release of my new CD “Children of a Factory Nation” at one of Second Life’s newest steampunk venues – “the Abandoned Factory”. It was perfect place for the task at hand – playing songs from an album set in the Industrial Revolution in England, at a time when everyones lives were being turned upside down by the invention of new machines. And why Second Life for the launch? The album was made possible by the online community – in particular, by Second Life residents, so along with the release, pre-sales opened to anyone on the Second Life group list (“The Darkness of Jordan Reyne Deezul”) and the video for the first single was shown for the first time to those who helped make the album happen. There was dancing, revelry, and consumption of virtual absynth (which tastes exactly as convincing as whatever you have sitting by your keyboard in real life). There were DJs and dancers and wall to wall victorian eye candy. When the time came to play the new video for the first single “Johnny & the Sea” there was so much support and goodwill that I have to say that being part of the live music scene in SL is one of the most life-changing things to have happened to me in years. I have never felt such support or openness to new ideas as I have in the online music world. A huge thanks to all of you who made it happen – Chryblnd Scribe, Knowledge Tomorrow, and the Idle Rogue crew, and all the wonderful freinds I have online. It is great to live in a world that makes it possible to meet and work with you all! New Album of Folklore from a Factory NationAs most of you know, there is a new album “Children of a Factory Nation” in the mix. It started with a myserious character called Johnathan X who was born in the 1800s and had been a seaman for most of his life, yet somehow still managed to drown only a few hundred metres away from his home. His whole family turned out to be interesting – though just as much from what I don’t know about them as what I do. They came from Wales, and caught my eye when delving into my own geneaology last year. So few facts remained that I could only wonder at how these characters had ended up in the situations that were recored, and how they could have died the way they did.
Dark? Grims fairytale like? You know I have a taste for that sort of thing Anyway, to the album project. It is a series of tales such as Johnny’s, following a Welsh family from 1860 through to 1930 as they deal with life, love and the impact of heavy machinery and mechanised working conditions on their lives. You can hear track two “A Woman Scorned” – the tale of Johnny’s wife after he has vanished into the sea – in the video below. You will also find out via the video, that we have run into a few problems. Half way through the recording of the album, our co-investor pulled out suddenly, without explanation, leaving us somewhat in the lurch. “Lurch” being a polite word compared to the explatives used at the time! In the video above, I ask for help to get this album prject to completion. I am always very uncomfortable asking people for financial assistance, but unfortunately it’s the only option remaining. Also, I know that a lot of you want to see (and hear) this CD finished as much as I do! Of all the story CDs I have worked on, I have not been as excited as I am about this one. For those of you who come to live shows regularly, there are some real favorites on there: “Johnny & the Sea” and “A Woman Scorned” are there along with “The Arsonist”, “A Healers Folly”, “Blood on the Sea” and “Crooked Man”. Please check out the video and the music and I will keep you posted about how things are going. In the meantime I look forward to playing the stories of Johnny and his family to you at live shows!
Posted in New music, folklore
Tagged celtic folk music, celtic music, fairy tales, folk rock, folk tales, folklore, galleon, ghost ship, ghosts, irish folk music, legend, new music
Leave a comment
More places to play OnlineGiven the amount of info, know-how, and time it takes to shows in Second Life, you might be wondering if there isn’t an easier way. As with mosth things online, there are always other avenues to explore. The ones I will mention here are by no means the only ones, but they are ones I am able to offer some info on and talk about advantages and disadvantages. All online shows have the key advantage of international exposure, low or zero overhead costs, and zero travel time. But there are other things to watch for aswell. This weeks installment in the “How to Perferm your Music Online” series compares Facebooks new “Streamjam” application with “Ustream” and “Second Life” as places to get yourself heard and paid in cyberspace. Second Life’s key disadvantage? The steep learning curve. Getting your existing outworld fans to start using SL is almost impossible. Enter Facebook’s new “Streamjam” application. Contra to Second Life, it offers a really easy user interface. You can check it out by logging into Facebook and clicking this link http://apps.facebook.com/streamjam . Once the page loads, you will see a list of musicians who already play regularly in Streamjam, and when they are next playing (I play in there every Wednesday at 8pm Berlin time). Understanding Streamjam as a listener experience is vital, so find an upcoming concert in the list and visit it. When someone is doing a show now or soon, you will see a yellow button beside their name saying “enter”. Click on it. You’ll then be asked if you are a boy or a girl. Click whichever you feel like being and you will find yourself in a room with an avatar of that gender with your name above it. Unless you are really early, there will be other avatars there too, spinning on their heads, dressed in rainbow pants, and chatting to one another. There will also be a bog screen where you can see the performer. It should look more or less like the image below. To arrange to play shows in Streamjam, you need to contact the people at Electric Sheep who are very cool indeed and actually used to have a massive presece in Second Life too. Streamjam is in its Beta phase, but it is pretty stable and the lag is minimal when you perform. They will talk you through what you need to do to set up for shows. It does help if you have experience with the technicalities of doing shows online, so you may want to do a few shows on other online platforms before you contact them – for example, ustream, which I will talk about next. Streamjam’s Advantages are as follows: it is far easier to use than Second Life. It takes advantage of the fact that people are comfortable with the facebook interface and can happily log into your shows directly from facebook. The avatars are fun and hilarious and it really lends itself to having a good time. For those who like webcams, you get to be seen in full. Disadvantages: you can only have up to 15 people in a “room” at once before another room is created. This means that if you log in to your own shows in order to see the chat, you only see the people in your “room”. There is currently no reliable way to earn money for playing, though they are working on this. For those of you who hate having to spend time on hair, makeup, etc, its a webcam. If you are lucky enough to be a novelty or comedy band though, you can always wear a mask to save yourself at least half an hour of prep time. I first discovered ustream because it was the back-end to Facebooks Streamjam application. This is no longer the case, but ustream itself is a really good platform. It has a lot of users already who you can encourage to attend your shows via the “crowd” function. All members of ustream have the option of joining a “crowd” which is like a fanbase for a particular show. Setting up is easy. Just head to the site at http://www.ustream.tv/ and click on the yellow button on the top left corner that says “Broadcast”. It will take you trough setting up your own channel and show. You should end up with a channel of your own something like this: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/jordan-reyne (which is my one). Again you will need a webcam to do these shows, but it is very easy to get existing fans and friends to sign up. People watching your shows also appear in a chat window next to your webcame display. There is no limit to the numbers in chat so you can interact with everyone and anyone who is there and chatting. You can also record performances to post to youtube or your webpage as below: Disadvantages: No avatars (though this can be advantageous too for those who find them tricky). Webcam (performers are allowed to hate it). Zero income. This is something to do for the love and for exposure. Let me know if you have any questions or if you know of other cool places to play online. I’d love to know about them and pass the info on. In the mean time, enjoy the holiday season Part 6 – Making Your Own GroupLast time I mentioned groups as the key way of promoting your music in Second Life. Groups are a way of telling people who are likely to be interested in you, that you are playing, and to come and check ou out. The best groups of all are those where there is a high correlation between what you are doing, and the groups interests. So if you play death metal, dont be signing up to the Second Life Christian Happiness Club, just because it has four thousand members. You won’t get any takers. The very best fit, in terms of a group, are people who have signed up to YOUR group, because they like what you do. Anyone can made a group, and in Second Life, your own group becomes incredibly important – essentially it is your lifeblood. The larger your group, the bigger the crowd you can regularly pull, and thus, the more the venue owners will be prepared to pay you. To make a group, you’ll have to pay 100 Lindens, which is less that 50 American cents. Before you make one, be sure that you have at least TWO good freind, who have group space and will stay in your group. Groups get shut down when their membership falls below two. Here is how to set up a group of your own:
Whenever you play you need to encourage anyone who likes you or what you are doing to sign up to your group so they can be informed about when and where you are playing next. As your group grows, so will both the fun (my group is full of some of the coolest people I have met – you really make freinds doing this) and the fees you can command. You need to have patience here, but over time it is possible to make a living playing music online. Several of my freinds actually do no offline performances at all and make a very healthy living inworld. This was the last installment of the howto on playing shows in Second Life. There are also many other places to play online, and although none are as luctrative, you can rech out to very differet audiences. Stay tuned for more howtos, and let me know if you still have questions as I am happy to help! Remember too, to sign up to the mailinglist for monthly updates, pre-release freebies, music recommendations, and random wackyness from life in general Have a great December!! 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
2 Comments
Part 4 – more on streams (They’re tricky)We touched on streams and setting them up in Part 2, but they are tricky things to understand and a few of you emailed requesting more detailed instructions, so here goes. Thing one is don’t panic. Easier said than done becuase I certainly panicked when I went through this the first time A stream, when it is operational, is a flow of information from one place to another. A data stream. Think of it like electricity. You cant make use of it unless you buy a cable (the stream you bought is this cable). It can’t _flow_ unless you plug it in your end. At your end, the plug / socket is that bit of software called “butt” I got you to dowload in part 2. If you still don’t have it, go here and download it http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Audio/butt.shtml . The notecard you got when you bought your stream is like a description of how the plug can be connected. On the far end of this plugged in cable – the end you actually have no control over, is the venue. Think of them as teh appliance – a radio, essentially. Once YOU have plugged in (using butt and your notecard as we will look at in a sec), you need to give the venue owner some information so s/he can plug in too. Once both parties are plugged in, the “radio” sparks up and people can hear you. PLUGGING IN YOUR STREAM When you buy a stream, from Trax or anywhere else, you will get a notecard. It lands in your inventory (the little suitcase icon) and you can find it by doing a search in your inventory for “stream”. That notecard gives you four vital peices of information. It is this information that helps you “plug in”. It also helps the venue owner plug in. The info will look like this: 1) the public address of your stream. This is what you give to venue owners. It allows them to “plug in your radio” and broadcast you when you start playing. The rest of the information is for you only: 2) the address of your stream 3) the port number 5) your password Install and open “Butt” (Great name isn’t it? We are now going to mess about with butt. You can have fun with facebook status messages here if your humour is as crass as mine You should see a very basic looking blue box with some grey underneath and three buttons. A red circle, a white square and a white triangle. On the right hand side, in the dark blue area, you will see a word “settings”. Click on it. Another window will appear. It has 4 tabs: main, stream, rec and gui. You dont need to worry about rec or gui. Click on “main”. You should now have something similar to the image below. The first feild allows you to select your sound source. If you are using an external soundcard look for it’s name in the list. Make sure if you have a webcam with a mic that it is unpluged cos sometimes this value will default to your webcams mic. Once you have selected a sound source, you need to click the button UNDER “server” that says “add”. It will open another window. This is where you need your notecard with your stream information. Under “name” put the name you would like to call your stream. “Joe’s Stream” for eg. Under adress, put the address that is in the notecard. It will look somethign like this: 69.162.64.66 (that is my own stream address, yours may be different). Yes, leave off the http:// stuff for now. I find mine won’t work if I put it in. In the next box, you need to write the port number that appears on your notecard. This is also just a numer and should look like this: 10156 (or whatever your port number is). The box under that needs your password in it. Click “save”. Next go to the “stream” tab. You can select a bitrate here. Lower bitrates are less likeley to stutter at the listener end. I broadcast at 64K and the quality is good with no dropouts. Obviously higher bitrates are better quality but it isn’t so descernable from the listener end. Ready to make music? Plug in your guitar and mic to your soundcard, and hit the white triangle on the butt interface. I should say “connected” if you entered the info correctly. Course, noone can HEAR you becuase the other end is not “plugged into the radio” to keep up with the metaphor, but you will be able to see if you have managed to plug your end in. Does it sit on “connecting..”? for ages? Check your internet cable first. Then check the numbers in your settings for Butt. You can try putting the http://www part into the start of your stream, hitting “save” and then trying again. I am not certain why but some seem to work with this and some not. Once your end is connected, Butt will say “connected” and the adress of your broadcast will show in the white part of the window. GETTING HEARD You are now able to plug in your end and broadcast. The sad thing is, no one will hear you unless someone is at the other end to “hook up the radio” as it were. This is teh REALLY hard part. You need to log into second life and find a freindly venue owner, or a person with “land”. Anyone with land in SL can plug in to your stream and get it broadcast onto the land. For them to do that, they need the public addess – bit 1 of the 4 bits of info on your notecard. So, teleport your avatar over to wherever the venue or land is, and give this freindly landowner, of venue owner the address that was in your notecard. Once they have you plugged in their end, hit that white triangle in butt on your end, and start talking. Ask them if they hear you. They may need to toggle their “local sounds” button from within Seond LIfe (the triangle at the top right hand side of their Second LIfe Viewer). Sometimes the lag is long between your speaking and people hearing you, but dont worry, this is normal. If that works, you are ready to play. You just need to find some places to do it. Start by offering this freind a show for their private party (if they are a landowner) or a tips only show if they have a venue. Sadly, you will need to do some tips only shows to make yourself known inworld, and this can take a while, but once it does, you can kiss your real world job goodbye and make a living doing this. Last but not least, I know I promised venues for this part, so for those of you who were already ok with Butt and connections, here are some great places to start playing. They are tips only, but depending on how determined you are, you will get paid shows within weeks. Enter these veue names into search and teleoprt there to check them out. I have contact names for some too so you can IM them or send them a notecard. VENUES Foxy Hollow – Tadao (have a great open mic night on tuesdays where you can just turn up and play). |
We trimmed and tucked, and in the end got it down to that lean, yet still insane, 6 minutes I had assumed the song was. More skyping went on, spannig continents and timezones – Jonathan in sunny New Zealand, Eloise in Berlin, and me in Hamburg – as we talked through the kind of scenes that would fit with the story, characters, and how best to depict them without driving the animators into rooms with padded walls during the best months of New Zealand’s summer. We wheedled down the cast of animated beings to the essential charaters – it was then time for the team to design them:
Firstoff, a recap on Second Life’s pros and cons before moving on:
