Archive for SLMC Second Life® Music Community Forum          SLMC Forum Index -> Collaborations attorianzo A SL band: is it possible? I would try to play my bass guitar here in SL with other people..just to try and have fun..Is it possible to do that? In SL I'm "Marco Zeffirelli" Silas Scarborough Yes, Virtual Live Band does that now.  They use NinJam to synchronize the different players.  Go to one of their shows and you'll find they're happy to talk about it.  There are other SL bands but that's the only one that's really live as in all the musicians in SL and playing with each other at the same time. Zak Claxton Silas Scarborough wrote: There are other SL bands but that's the only one that's really live as in all the musicians in SL and playing with each other at the same time. Uh, no. I can think of three, one being What The...?, the real life Atlanta-based band who performs pretty often in SL, with all three members being in world at the same time. Forum member Leyah Renegade is the guitarist. You should check them out Silas... they're a great rock band. EvaMoon But are they playing from different locations? I know VLB does. I heard a great Celtic trio the other day - Keltish. All three had avs on stage at the same time, but they were playing in the same room together in RL. Zak Claxton EvaMoon wrote: But are they playing from different locations? I know VLB does. No, they're together in the same room, unlike VLB. Silas had said VLB was "the only one that's really live as in all the musicians in SL and playing with each other at the same time", which is deinitely true of What the...? as well. Point being, yeah, you can have bands in SL. Doing it remotely takes quite a bit of coordination, so like Silas says, I'd talk to one of the VLB folks on that matter. ticious Yes, I think it's becoming much more common for multiple musicians to stream together into SL from a single location.  It's the multiple locations that sets VLB apart. Silas Scarborough I'm not clear as at one point it seems like What the ? is playing in the same room and in another comment it sounds like they're not.  Anyway, Ninjam is the tool they use and it's freeing insofar as the players can be in different locations but restrictive in that there can't be any tempo changes, etc. Zak Claxton Silas Scarborough wrote: I'm not clear as at one point it seems like What the ? is playing in the same room and in another comment it sounds like they're not. Yes, they are playing in the same room. All of them have their own SL accounts and avatars running off separate computers, and then they stream a stereo mix of the entire band as they play live. EvaMoon But the original question was from someone who wants to jam with other musicians in SL - that would be the VLB/Ninjam model. the Professor taken down as inaccurate see website quote, later Zak Claxton EvaMoon wrote: But the original question was from someone who wants to jam with other musicians in SL - that would be the VLB/Ninjam model. Right. I was responding to Silas, not the original poster. Silas Scarborough Re: And NinJams aren't in real time the Professor wrote: t's "live" in that they can't stop the tape like at a recording session. But it's not live in that it's asychronous and each successive stream (to the next player) is like a background tape. On the other hand, one can change the tempo.... but there would have to be agreement as to who's going to do it . . . the 4th person can't . .. but at some point, they can play a "break" and the first person (usually the drummer or the bass) could lay down a new tempo to continue the song with... No, no, no!  That isn't how it works.  What you've described is the metajam which is kind of the Abbott and Costello of music in which the person at the start of the stream is the 'straight man' and can't hear anything anyone else does.  It gets layered up as it goes from player to player and finally gets streamed into SL by the last one. Ninjam is quite a different thing and each of the players can hear each of the others but it's not as freeing as it sounds.  Check it out at ninjam.org.  Note the Mac version of the code is in alpha. vonjohin Re: And NinJams aren't in real time Ouch. That sounds dreadfully complicated for live performance use. My RL experience stems from playing with folks whose work led to the "jam band" genre, with wild, even excessively long improvisational playing, songs linking from one to the other, etc. I guess you could do that with Ninjam, but you'd have to take the "jam" part out. If Silas has it right, maybe its not as restricting as that, but it still sounds like the concept is there but the execution is still limited. There has to be latency, and I am guessing that only one person submits the final sound source to Nicecast, etc. I want to find out there, so I'm going to check out their site. I'd love to have a harp player blowing with me on some shows from far away. the Professor wrote: Ninjam is about half way between a multi-track recording and a jam. Each player is by themselves, with the feed of what's been over-layed via the sequential efforts of each of the previous players as the bed over which they add their part. It's "live" in that they can't stop the tape like at a recording session. But it's not live in that it's asychronous and each successive stream (to the next player) is like a background tape. On the other hand, one can change the tempo.... but there would have to be agreement as to who's going to do it . . . the 4th person can't . .. but at some point, they can play a "break" and the first person (usually the drummer or the bass) could lay down a new tempo to continue the song with... the Professor how their site describes ninjam. Apologies if I explained it wrongly . . . I've not used it, but thought that I understood this passage. Apparently not. "Since the inherent latency of the Internet prevents true realtime synchronization of the jam2, and playing with latency is weird (and often uncomfortable), NINJAM provides a solution by making latency (and the weirdness) much longer. Latency in NINJAM is measured in measures, and that's what makes it interesting. The NINJAM client records and streams synchronized intervals of music between participants. Just as the interval finishes recording, it begins playing on everyone else's client. So when you play through an interval, you're playing along with the previous interval of everybody else, and they're playing along with your previous interval. If this sounds pretty bizarre, it sort of is, until you get used to it, then it becomes pretty natural. In many ways, it can be more forgiving than a normal jam, because mistakes propagate differently. " http://www.ninjam.com/ Silas Scarborough Professor, much more like it! There's potential in Ninjam but metajamming is a complete waste of electrons. Jojamela Soon Re: A SL band: is it possible? attorianzo wrote: I would try to play my bass guitar here in SL with other people..just to try and have fun..Is it possible to do that? In SL I'm "Marco Zeffirelli" I spoke with Marco inworld and referred him to this forum,   He didn't say it in his original question, but one of the things he asked is if it was possible to jam with other musicians using voice (not streaming) Have any of you tried it?   does it work?  I was thinking along the lines of a back porch jam, not necessarily a concert. Norris Shepherd I went to a Christmas Carol sing along in SL with people singing by voice... it wasn't pretty.   I know some people who have sung, played using voice.. but it doesn't work real well... very hard to get synched up, and what each individual will hear will be different... Jambalaya The thing is that voice chat is still streaming audio, it's just implemented differently. But, the inherent latency of internet travel is enough to throw off the timing of two people trying to play together, no matter the means. Or, in English: there's still a delay, even in voice chat. vonjohin Looks like 2.5 years since Ninjam was "alpha released" for Mac OS X. I'm thinking I'm not going to put that on my system. I guess if I want a harp blowing on my stuff, I'll have to invite somebody to my home studio and put them on a microphone. Silas Scarborough vonjohin wrote: Looks like 2.5 years since Ninjam was "alpha released" for Mac OS X. I'm thinking I'm not going to put that on my system. I guess if I want a harp blowing on my stuff, I'll have to invite somebody to my home studio and put them on a microphone. It's ugly but it works as some, maybe all, of VLB's members use it on Macs. Komuso Tokugawa I've done a number of ninjam gigs in SL. You can check out some videos of the ambient electronica audiovisual gigs with Moshang Zhao [he's playing from Taiwan and me in Tokyo] in the SynaesthAsia post on http://www.sonicviz.com/music/members/6/blog.php Hathead Rickenbacker and I also just ran a very successful live test gig today of our new ninjam based blues set at his dual sim venue in SL. Hathead's playing piano from Toronto and I'm playing guitar/harp/rhythms from Tokyo. Feedback from audience was extremely positive. There's a few tricks imo to using ninjam well. RL jamming experience and the ability to listen are key criteria, as is an open mind to working with the latency and spending some time to rehearse musical techniques and communication that work with this particular technology. You can't beat physics, especially when playing from different continents - at least not anytime in the next decade I predict. But the end result is IT DOES WORK if you invest a the time to work with it and understand how you may best play with it..in that respect it is no different from rehearsing a rl based band. Mambo Foxy and I are on Mac, Tom &  vic are on PCs  & the Ninjam server is hosted with a service provider. Is also worth noting we all Run SL on an different computer. Ningam works well,  once you get your head around the way the measures work,  but it dose stop you from doing hard changes  like bridges and breaks. Mimi Carpenter 3 members band I did my first gig by 3 with Maximillion Kleene and Dolmere Talmasca yesterday, with relaycasting/daisy-chained streaming. We had fun and will do it again for sure. We played 5 songs all together. Max (Canada) was sending his sound to me (Germany), then i was playing over and sending the mix to Dol (US) who was playing the bass over it and sending the whole to the Bay's stream. That's amazing and a really pleasant experience to share. We listened to the recording and the result was quite satisfying. The audience seemed to be delighted too. Can't wait to do it again! dolmere What Mimi, Max and I have been doing in-world lately I refer to as "Relaycasting". I think that Slim, Silas and others refer to it as "metajamming". I prefer the former term as I think it better describes the process. Sam Hokin and Flaming Moe were likely the first to use this technique back in 2005. You can read about it and download their performance at Astrin/Sam's website: <a href="http://www.bsharp.org/sam/music/AstrinFew/index.html">http://www.bsharp.org/sam/music/AstrinFew/index.html</a> It's not perfect by any means but it does allow a form of collaboration that can be fun for all parties. FYI - this Saturday March 22nd we'll be performing another relaycast. This time instead of Mimi and I "sitting in" on one of Max's shows we've managed to put some planning behind it: Dolmere Talamasca will be live at the SoHo stage with a special mid-set treat. Dol will be joined by his bandmates Mimi Carpenter and Max Kleene. As an added bonus Mimi will remain at her show at Nitida Ridge and Max will remain at his show at the Bellagio. All three audiences on all three separate sims will be able to listen in to this special relaycast event! BabbleGrabble That is really, really, really flippin' cool, dolmere. Toby Lancaster Re: A SL band: is it possible? Jojamela Soon wrote: I spoke with Marco inworld and referred him to this forum,   He didn't say it in his original question, but one of the things he asked is if it was possible to jam with other musicians using voice (not streaming) Have any of you tried it?   does it work?  I was thinking along the lines of a back porch jam, not necessarily a concert. I've had some great times jamming in Voice. Sometimes the latency is negligable. It's not reliable enough for a normal audience, can be really flaky sometimes, but is still great fun. Anyone tried using eJamming or JamNOW and streaming that into SL?        SLMC Forum Index -> Collaborations Page 1 of 1