switching from guitar to piano and back during a gig in SL

tradivoro · switching from guitar to piano and back during a gig in SL

Hi there, don't know if there are many doing this, but if you're in the middle of performance, how hard/easy is it to switch from the guitar and it's animation to perform on a piano and it's animation?? Is this hard, is this awkward?? I read another performer here that does half the gig on guitar and the other half on piano... I'm just looking to change it up for a couple of tunes on piano, the majority are on guitar... So, just wondering if anyone else does this in the middle of a set...

On another note, I just saw somebody peform a couple of days ago, was doing the set on guitar, finished his set doing a piano tune and the guitar stayed playign with its animation... Nobody batted an eyelash... Smile

The guy was great too...

Fyrm Fouroux

Hi, yes. I do this. I start of playing guitar, but I rez my piano at the beginning of the show so it is ready. Half way through I switch to piano. Now, sometimes I forget to change the animation on my avi Smile

but it doesn't really matter. Usually I remember and make a bit of a joke about it. Good luck, anyway

Tishe

Yep, Fyrm does this . . . so does Anj Gustafson. Anj rez's a keyboard set up just like the one he has at home (in rl) and stands on top of it when he's playing his guitar or flute (using the appropriate props/animations). Others just stick to the guitar animation and there's no problem. It's about music, not builds and animations (tho there are some way cool builds and animations out there), so do what works for you Smile

.

tradivoro

Thanks folks for your replies... Yes Fyrm, now that I see your avatar, it was you who I had read that did this halfway through his set... Now do you bring your own piano to the gig, or use the one that they have at the club??

Not having any experience even using the guitar with its animation, is it the kind of thing where you just remove the guitar altogether and it "dissapears" and then you materialize a piano, or are they both on the stage and just put one down and go to the next... Also do any of these activities interfere with the streaming?? I'm imagining myself talking to the crowd while doing this whole maneuver of switching from one instrument to the other in second life... In real life, it's right in front of me, I'm just putting down the guitar... Smile

And Tishe yes, I also believe it's about the music... And that's an interesting visual, Anj standing on the keyboard, while playing the guitar... Definitely different, I have to check Anj out... I only have maybe 2 or 3 songs on piano and the rest are on guitar... And they're all ballads, so I couldn't switch to just do ballad after ballad... otherwise people fall asleep... Smile

Like I mentioned in my earlier post, there was this one person performing who switched to the piano in rl while keeping the guitar animation during the tune and nobody minded...

I guess I'll try to experiment, seeing how easy I can switch from one to the other, and if it's a drag, I'll just stay on the guitar, and they'll get a guitar that sounds like a piano from time to time... Smile

Thanks for the info...

Tishe

What time zone are you in Trad? Your best way forward here is to catch shows where this is happening, see what the various musicians are doing and see what you think will work best for you. Then, of course, you'll practice it on stage until you get it just the way you want it Laughing

Fyrm Fouroux

Ok, Trad, let me think how I do it.

1) I rez the piano and have it positioned so my avi is angled to the audience but the audience can see the keyboard. I have this rezzed just off centre stage, because I stand centre stage when I play guitar.

2) If there is a piano already on set (as there is at The Cup n Spittle) then I tend to play that. Otherwise I rez my upright piano (but I have got a grand piano for big stages).

3) I have a folder which I call 'Gig bag' in my SL Inventory. I have my guitar within that folder. I click on the guitar click 'Wear' and so I wear the guitar. When I first got the guitar, I tried it out in private and adjusted its position so my hands did move along the fretboard and it was roughly right in front of my belly.

4) With my guitar, I click on the guitar body and get a menu which has a lot of different animations to choose from. I tried these in private and worked out which one suits my style best. So... in performance, I have to click the guitar body, then click to choose the animation, then I click to ignor the animations options box to make it get off my screen.

5) When I finish playing guitar: first, I click the guitar and then click stop on the menu. That stops the strumming animation. Then I right click the guitar and click 'take' - that takes the guitar back to my inventory.

6) If I am at a venue with a proper mic, I then click to 'Stand' so I get off the mic

7) Then I turn my avi... move to the piano, click the piano stool and get a menu - click 'Play' option ... that sits my avi down on the piano stool and starts a play animation.

Cool

Back home in First Life in my studio, I quickly take off my electro acoustic guitar, put my plec somewhere I won't forget it, unplug the guitar and lean it on a handy chair.

9) Walk over to my digital piano, taking my folder of music and the songlist for my show. Usually pause for a swig of coffee now going cold, on the way...

10) play a few chords on the piano and adjust or fine tune the volume from the volume control on my piano.

Then I sing and play. To go back to guitar... is just the reverse process.

There are a couple of things I would mention. My studio is small, so I can move from where I play guitar to the piano and the leads will trail with me

I use a good quality headset mic. That moves with me from where I play guitar, to where I play piano. So I do not have separate voice mics to worry about (I used to once and that was a drag).

Now, this bit might sound a bit kinky. I have modified a wide (5 cm) leather belt to house my various leads, making it much easier for me to physically move across my studio. I have taped (loads of masking tape) a 3.5 extension lead to the back of the belt and this connects to the monitoring output socket of my external Edirol sound box. [I have always monitored using IEMs and have always found this perfectly adequate for what I do]. I also have another lead taped to the back of the belt for the connection between my headset mic and my Alesis usb mixer. At the start of the show, I buckle myself into this belt and attach the two leads BEFORE I put my guitar on (I like to wear a guitar strap when I play). I can stand up or sit down as I choose, because the headset mic goes where my mouth is.

One final point....
I monitor the levels on my ShoutCast streaming software from the laptop I use to take the input from the Alesis mixer and Edirol box. I have a SECOND extension monitor screen positioned on top of my digital piano so that I can also monitor levels from there. I don't change my vocal settings on the Alesis when moving from guitar to piano. And I set an average ok setting on the Alesis for the piano in practice. So... if the Shoutcast streamed levels look too high, I can pull them back by making a fine tune adjustment from my digital piano volume control.

Well, I hope this helps!

tradivoro

Hi Tishe, I'm in New York City... Believe me, I've checked out a LOT of acts, and so far, they either sing or play the guitar, nobody plays the piano and sings of the acts I've checked out... Only one person was a solo pianist, that is no singing, just instrumental pianist... So, for whatever reason, I'm missing the singing piano players... Smile

tradivoro

Fyrm, that wasn't just helpful, that was absolutely brilliant... Thank you so much for all this information... Smile

I have also thought of getting the headset mic, just for that purpose of not losing voice tone from instrument to instrument... But yes, you have an amazing set up, to say the least... Smile

For starters, I will mostly likely than not play sitting down, and the mic will be at the same spot because I'm sitting in front of the keyboard, or pick up the guitar and then play sitting down... About the only thing that will change momentarily is taking off my headphones when I change form the guitar to the piano and vice versa... At present, I'm doing very few piano tunes, but they can come any time in the course of the performance, at present I have to feel out where to best change instruments and things like that...

But yes, I hope that they make your post a sticky for the benefit of others, that is extremely, extremely helpful... Many, many thanks... Smile

Tishe

Fyrm Fouroux

Thank you for your kind words, Trad. I think once you get a basic set up you can then experiment. I have branched out, from time to time, using a looper; a Roland synth in parallel with my digital piano; an M-Audio AudioBuddy to capture wierdstuff on a separate mic to go into the looper, and sometimes I play the Tadcaster electric guitar that I made for myself. All these things complicate the situation for you at the mixer.

However, generally speaking, I have come to the view that simple is best; I don't try to play lead guitar over the top on the looper. When I sing and play guitar, that is what I do. And the same for singing with piano. There is plenty enough to be thinking about, without making it even more difficult for oneself. Of course, if you don't play it live, you can record lovely stuff using a looper and then just click on the file to play it back.

...I have edited out my original final paragraph of this post because, on reflection, it was too caustic about the use of backing tracks from computer files. I have an ENTIRELY personal prejudice against using them in my own performances. Some good friends of mine in SL use them very effectively and with very good reason. For example, EvaMoon Ember has a live band in First Life and she sometimes plays a track of their arrangements in order to sing material that she could not stream into SL otherwise; Nad Gough sings to some excellent computer music arrangements, created in a DAW (digital audio workstation).

So, Trad, I want to say what I experience without opening up the whole backing track thing as an issue (the extreme example of this is straight Karaoke). What I am saying is that I have decisions to make about how complex I want to make the music that I stream up. I could put my own acoustic guitar lead over some of my songs (and I shall be doing that over some of my friends songs at a music mate's birthday party in First Life this coming Sunday). I could try to do that with my looper. I could also put some nice digital piano instrumentation into my songs at the turn arounds and maybe as instrumental verse breaks (I have a great tenor sax that I can play on my digital piano, for example). For me, and this might simply be a reflection on my limited skills as a musician and technician, I have not had the courage to do this live with a looper on more than a few occasions in the past. I mean, another friend here, Hexx, is very daring with the use of loopers. I can see that I could also put down my own vocal harmonies, too, and that would be nice in some chorus songs. Again, I am too nervous about doing it.

In conclusion, there might be ways you could integrate your guitar and piano playing to a greater extent than I do, especially if you pre-record some of it. I have a personal hangup about doing that which is largely emotional and irrational, but it is how I feel. It might be good for you to talk to people who are much more skilled at doing this than me. I figured I would at least raise some of these issues as things you might want to think about. Good luck.

tradivoro

Well, thanks for the names, I will definitely keep an eye out for Anj, Fyrm's and your performances as well in the near future... Smile

[quote="TisheI think Anj is east coast time zone too, so check him out. His in game name is Andreus Gustafson, his group name is the 'Anj' Gustafson Continuum. Find and join his group (it's in my profile for easy search, Fyrm's Fyrmusica is there too). Check out both, they both sing, play guitar and piano and Anj also plays flute. You will be glad you did! Very Happy

Edited to add: My in game name is Ticious Trottier[/quote]

tradivoro

Hi Fyrm thanks once again... So far, performing the actual music is not the problem, cause I'm been practicing doing it the tunes sitting down in my studio space, and it works, my main issue was the actual working of the avatars in second life, how to get them to be realistic... Smile

The guitar problem has been solved since I'm using a fishman aura as opposed to a microphone... There's just too many issues with acoustic guitars and microphones, this is the most natural sounding solution without using a mic... I'm also tempted to use my Sheraton II in a jazz setting cause it also works as acoustic electric doing acoustic type of tunes but has more versatility as far as tone is concerned... The piano is just a patch on the keyboard that works well as a piano...

I have seen a lot of varied acts in SL and one of the things that I was pretty amazed at first was the audience acceptance of people using straight commercial karaoke tracks... There are some people that are doing more standard and cabaret material, and they are just singers not singer/songwriters, so for them this has been a viable solution, and it appears that they have gotten acceptance from the SL community... Adn the audience in these situations were enjoying it throuroughly.... But I have also seen some rock acts using backing tracks, either on every song or on some songs and I think that worked much better cause they were playing an instrument and it allowed them to solo and stuff... Usually guitar.... Considering the type of material they were doing, even though it was covers, some of it could only work using backing tracks...

Because a lot of my material is designed for performance with a band and with harmonies, I will be using some backing tracks, but limited to bass and drums, while I play the guitar on some songs... The arrangements have been changed considerably from my CD for Second Life so that it's performed with me playing one acoustic guitar live, as opposed to multiple electric guitars and other instruments... When performing in real life, since I don't play with the same people all the time, I have to scale arrangements down too, since I may only be able to get a bass player and a drummer (I don't play all that often live, so I can't have a band all the time)... To get around the problem of harmonies, I'm using a TC Helicon Live 2, and in real life, that gets a LOT of compliments, and I don't have to worry about if any of the people I'm playing with sing or not... Now granted, I have a lot of production and arranging experience so for me to change things around on the fly is very easy...

So for the most part on SL, it will be a mixed bag of instrumentation to vary it up a bit, some solo acoustic guitar tunes, some guitar tunes using drum and bass backing tracks, some solo piano... And harmonies from the TC Helicon for the tunes that have harmonies... We'll see how the audience accepts all this or if they'll start throwing vegetables at the stage... Smile

Tishe

Fortunately you won't find me performing in SL (at least, not musically) as I am a venue owner, not a musician. Take my word for it, that's a REALLY good thing for SL music!

Pop by Rocky Shores (Saturday 3-6pm) or Cascadia Harmonics (Sunday 11am-5pm or Tuesday 4pm to 7pm) to see me in action. Oh, and Fyrm is also there at 11am on Sundays!!

tradivoro

Oh yes, without venues, there wouldn't be anywhere to play in now would there... Smile

And yes, I definitely will check out rocky shores and cascadia harmonics... I am still exploring places in second life, and I'm sure I'm not aware of 1/10 of them...

Nad

tradivoro

Yeah, I guess I should do the same... Smile