The Ravelong Award goes to the top Second Life DJ clubs which over the course of the year exhibited outstanding excellence in showcasing live DJ talent in an atmosphere that can only found in the virtual world. 2008 was an amazing year for SL Clubs and music communities. The scene, followers, and fans blew up in unbelievable proportions. Many people are always craving clubs and music venues where the focus is the live turntable djs and the electronic music culture.
Second Life features many clubs that come and go, however from time to time, a rare crew of talent gets together and sparks the idea to create a DJ music venue that goes beyond anyone's expectations. The elements line into place, and the crowds follow. The Ravelong Awards will honor and pay respect to the top breed of the phenominal SL DJ Clubs of 2008.
The 2008 Top DJ Clubs of Second Life ARE NOW ANNOUNCED HERE. Which clubs were your favorites? Which clubs and crews do you think will win the award? Which clubs would you nominate?
Each Club will receive an award at the Ravelong Awards Ball in Early January.
I still do not understand why many land owners are so attached the the old green vote boxes. They swear they work, and refuse to get rid of them. I have seen entire packed events, and the votes are going into the boxes.... but...
THESE VOTE BOXES DO NOTHING. They havn't done anything in SL in over 3 years. Although it is a lovely relic from virtual yesteryear, the old green vote box made by Linden is nothing more than decoration. It says "thank you for your vote" and then files the votes under 'D' for 'Doesn't Do Anything'
TIME TO GET THE WORKING LAND VOTER: The MetaVoter!
This time Djai Skjellerup has written a Christmas song, "Christmas All Year Through', and invited Second Life performers to send in their recordings which are being mixed into a collaborative song.
The list of artists who appear on the finished song:
BabbleGrabble Swindlehurst Carah Nitely Djai Skjellerup Franz Paine Jean Munro Kaklick Martin Kiaranne Flanagan Krell Karu Lonnie Nightfire Lyn Carlberg Mambo Welles Mimi Carpenter OhMy Kidd The Professor Rich Desoto Saraine Sands Slim Warrior Tommy Cult Toby Lancaster Tpenta Vanalten Vicki Nilsson Zak Claxton
BabbleGrabble Swindlehurst BabbleGrabble Swindlehurst is an American singer-songwriter from the San Francisco Bay Area. He began his musical career at an early age as a concert violinist and eventually shifted his focus to the guitar, songwriting, and other instruments, delving into the rock and roll music he grew up on. BabbleGrabble ultimately built his own home studio for creating and recording music.
After several years of writing songs and performing with other bands, he discovered the amazing potential of Second Life and has been performing live shows in SL for over a year. He enjoys entertaining audiences with a wildly diverse range of cover songs, playing acoustic guitar and crooning into the microphone with a sultry voice that is like being draped in velvet on a calm sea.
Carah Nitely Coming from a huge musical background, Carah Nitely is a live performer from the UK. Proud to have inherited her voice from her mum who was once a professional singer both nationally and internationally. Carah now happily takes the stage in Second Life and her soulful voice covers such artists as Westlife, Wil Young, Leann Rimes, Bette Midler, Colby Callait and many more.
Djai Skjellerup Djai is a piano vocal singer songwriter from the UK. Djai wrote the song "Christmas All Year Through" and conceived the project for the recording and free distribution of the song. Djai's shows consist of his own songs which he performs live. His album "Ice Age Diaries" will be available later in 2009.
Franziskus Paine Franziskus is a musician from Hamburg, Germany, who loves to play in Second Life.Music. He is a pianist and singer, a variety of rock, pop, ballads and evergreens. As well as playing piano, Franz is also an experienced drummer and trumpet player.
Jean Munro Jean has her degree in music and is a professional vocalist and keyboard player, arranger, and composer. She likes to perform in all genres, from classical, rock, contemporary, and Jazz, putting her own personal style into everything she does.
Kaklick Martin Kaklick martin (Bryan Baker) is a metaverse musician: A singer/songrwriter performing in, and writing songs about, the virtuak world known as Second Life. Bryan's avatar, Kaklick, took to the stage in Second Life for the first time back in late 2005, so he is among the most respected performers in Second Life and was an early evangelist for the live music scene there.
Krell Karu A musician with an extended background, Krell has shared the stage with diverse artists such as Leon Russell and Roomful of Blues, through artists such as Shelley West (Jose' Cuervo, You are a Friend of Mine) and Gus Hardin, to such rockers as Blues Traveler and 38 Special.
After such endeavors, Krell has just moved to Second Life. Krell is comfortable singing and playing guitar on anything from Country Blues through firebreathing Shred-fest, with stops in between for Rock, Alternative, Classic and Contemporary Country, as well as many others.
With his varied background, there is quite a spectrum to choose from. However, Krell is currently focusing on a solo variety rock'n'blues covers format, accompanying himself on his 12-string. Any given set could include anything from Elvis Costello, Clapton, Beatles, Goo Goo Dolls, Willie Nelson, Toad The Wet Sprocket, Led Zeppelin, Matchbox 20, or even Looking Glass.
Lonnie Nightfire Singer-songwriter Lonnie (RL Lonnie Knight) may joke that “Legendary is just another way of saying ‘...been around a long time,’” but the lanky Minnesotan is one of those rare musicians who has truly earned the title Legendary. He got his start as a folkie, learning from the likes of Townes Van Zandt. Then he played in some of the Midwest’s seminal rock bands, including Jokers Wild, the Nielsen-White Band and the Hoopsnakes. His 2005 CD Better Days brought him back to his acoustic roots, and the release of 2007’s tour de force, I Wrote My Name on You, his music is inspiring a whole new generation of fans.
Lyn Carlberg Lyn Carlberg is from Wales, land of song, dragons, and awesome rugby. He plays a Martin electro-acoustic guitar, and has been performing live in SL since Sept 2007. Lyn likes to play a folky style like Paul Simon, James Taylor, Gordon Lightfoot, Cat Stevens and sings bluesey-mushy-weepy romantic covers of Clapton, Dylan, Dire Straits, and Sting, as well as some traditional Celtic love songs and a few of his originals.
Mambo Welles Mambo Welles (RL - Trevor Tweedy): Based in West London, he's been playing bass for +25 years. During the 80's he worked with several unsigned bands in and around London. After a break from the music scene for a few years, he returned to playing live with the rock covers band, Limeburner (www.limeburner.co.uk).
Mambo was recruited for VLB after bumping into Throughthesewall Moody whilst Roller Skating at a gig in SL. For Mambo, VLB combines two of his favourite pastimes: Bass Playing and Second Life.
Mimi Carpenter Mimi Carpenter is French currently living in Germany. She was mostly brought up on country, Anglo-Saxon and world music, which her parents enjoyed listening to. "I wish to transmit what I feel through my music... It is for me a way to express myself as I am not so good in handling words, when I have to speak about myself and about what I feel..."
OhMy Kidd OhMy Kidd's acoustic guitar and vocal work have been developed over many years' RL experience, but their dynamic simplicity turns out to be ideally suited to Second Life performance. OhMy Kidd's original songs have their feet in the folk rock of the 1970s and their head in the strange but exciting world of the 21st Century. No wonder they have been described as "Hippie Music with a Haircut".
OhMy's shows feature his original set and he also plays classic covers from Pop to Rock, and likes to have extra-special fun on the ukelele. OhMy plays regularly at his own venue, The Pocket, and at various live music venues around Second Life.
The Professor Ed Lamoureux plays guitar and sings in SL as "the Professor." In RL he teaches Multimedia and Communication at Bradley U. in Peoria, IL; in SL he teaches Field Research/Ethnography as Professor Beliveau. He's active with the NMC both in RL and SL. Ed/the Professor/Professor Beliveau is married (28 years) with 4 teenagers (YIKES), enjoys golf, Angels/Lakers/Rams/Kings, watercoloring, and of course writing music and singing. He's had a rough time with health issues the last couple years: Music in SL has been a saving grace.
Rich Desoto Rich is known as Rich Palmer in real life. He plays bass for the band "The Fries" ( http://www.thefriesband.com/ ). Rich is working on new material for a pop/rock CD entitled "Future Retrospect." He's also a singer/songwriter that has recently released a CD for children called "Sing a Song for Safety."
Saraine Sands Saraine plays shakers, and often accompanys OhMy Kid at his live Second Life shows. She is a great supporter of live music in Second Life.
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Slim Warrior Slim, a recording artist based in London, is passionate about writing and composing her own music and hugelyinspired by listening to others. To this end, a widely varied mix of music has influenced the songs that she has writen. She also works on other projects with musicians from around the world in various collaborations. She was the first UK artist to perform live in SecondLife. Her music varies from Ambient to Dance with a few other genres in between.
Tommy Cult He sees himself as more of a busker, a resident in SL who found the fantastic music scene 2 years ago and was inspired to be part of it. He plays both nylon and steel string acoustic guitars and sings mainly his own tunes, folk/alternative style. He likes to write songs about family, friends, and things that make us laugh and cry.
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Toby Lancaster Toby Lancaster is a multi-instrumentalist and composer from the south of England. Although guitar is his maininstrument, he also plays keyboards and uses computers to make music. He composes in a number of styles including solo acoustic guitar, rock, blues, jazz, and experimental. He produced and engineered the Christmas All Year Through track.
Tpenta Vanalten In the mid 80's (rl Alan Hargreaves) he played with a few Newcastle Bands. Quarterdeck , a four piece pub band that did mainly covers of current popular and a smattering of their own material, and Kel-Anne & the Jitterbugs, A 50/50 Club band, playing dance music for clubs against an unusual set of 50-80's music. Alan dropped out of the music scene to pursue a (more lucrative) career in computing, but still kept his hand in.
In 2005, his wife invited him to Coastfest and this lead to his getting involved in the following year's Coastfest. He has been helping out with sound for the North monthly event and has started doing a couple of walk-ups.
He is now doing live music into Second Life under the name Tpenta Vanalten, and is having a blast and making a lot of new musician friends.
Vicki Nilsson Vicki Nilsson (RL Victoria Lee) is 41 and resides in Upsate NY. She has 25+ years experience as a drummer and has played in marching, symphonic, jazz and many local bar bands, with styles ranging from classic rock, folk, country, and more. After seeking some technical advice from BlueTom, she tried out as VLB's drummer and the rest was history! Dreams do come true!
Zak Claxton Zak Claxton is a singer/songwriter who has spent more than two decades as a live/session musician and audio technology expert. He plays often in SL. He likes expensive acoustic guitars, delicious cheeses, and his ladyfriend Kat Claxton.
☮ A unique winter journey incorporating retro holiday classic music although you have never heard these tunes played with the modern Doubledown flare. Sophisticated beats combined with jazztronica, live remixing, & DJ blending will turn these tunes and your holiday into a musical adventure.
After years of suing thousands of people for allegedly stealing music via the Internet, the recording industry is set to drop its legal assault as it searches for more effective ways to combat online music piracy.
The decision represents an abrupt shift of strategy for the industry, which has opened legal proceedings against about 35,000 people since 2003. Critics say the legal offensive ultimately did little to stem the tide of illegally downloaded music. And it created a public-relations disaster for the industry, whose lawsuits targeted, among others, several single mothers, a dead person and a 13-year-old girl.
Instead, the Recording Industry Association of America said it plans to try an approach that relies on the cooperation of Internet-service providers. The trade group said it has hashed out preliminary agreements with major ISPs under which it will send an email to the provider when it finds a provider's customers making music available online for others to take.
Depending on the agreement, the ISP will either forward the note to customers, or alert customers that they appear to be uploading music illegally, and ask them to stop. If the customers continue the file-sharing, they will get one or two more emails, perhaps accompanied by slower service from the provider. Finally, the ISP may cut off their access altogether.
For years the RIAA has been filing lawsuits against thousands of individuals who allegedly shared copyrighted music. Following recent court setbacks, the lobby group has announced it will stop mass lawsuits. Instead, it will focus on cutting deals with ISPs to disconnect ‘IP-addresses’ that repeatedly share copyrighted music.
Take action! Write to your ISP proactively and say you expect them not to compromise your privacy, security, or ability to communicate by kowtowing to RIAA attempts at intimidation.
Real Life DJane Lisa Lashes meets Second Life DJane Tasty Hax @ a premier event in RL/SL Koola Klubs! Lisa DJs for the first time in SL! Don't miss this very special party!! :D Tasty will DJ @ Koola Klub in SL followed by Lisa Lashes at Koola Klub in RL streaming to SL.
"Mono for Second Life" refers to a simulator upgrade which can dramatically speed the running of scripts — especially calculation intensive ones. The Linden Scripting Language ( LSL ) has not changed in any way*, so all of your existing scripted objects and attachments continue to function as before, only now they will now run faster.
Will the web ever go fully 3D? Opinion: From a lonely, flat 2D experience to a fun, social 3D world
The dream of internet pioneers, sci-fi writers and tech-obsessed geeks worldwide has always been the development of a fully 3D virtual online world.
After all, we all gobbled up William Gibson's Neuromancer back in the day, with the immortal lines (when he first coined the term 'cyberspace'): "Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding..."
Games show lead And while Blizzard's phenomenally successful World of Warcraft and other recent 'games' and applications such as Linden Labs' Second Life, Google's Street View and Sony's PS3 Home are (perhaps) early pointers in that direction, there are many who cannot see much further than the current rather lonely and 2D 'single player' web experience.
The idea behind MusicBox is that it analyzes every song for not only written metadata (artist, genre) but also beats per minute, length, tone, and a whole bunch of other semi-tangible quantities. It then organizes them based on whatever axes you choose.
The idea behind MusicBox is that it analyzes every song for not only written metadata (artist, genre) but also beats per minute, length, tone, and a whole bunch of other semi-tangible quantities (check out the demonstration video). It then organizes them based on whatever axes you choose — looking for your short, fast-paced songs? They’ll be on the upper left if you tick “song length” and “tempo.” Want those songs that change up their beat? They’ll be on the left if you just tick “time signature stability.” It even puts together graphic previews of the songs, much like what I found when using a spectrum analyzer.
Are virtual worlds under legal threat? Lawyer Sean Kane notes that http://www.worlds.com/ is now claiming to have invented the idea for a "System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space" back in 1995, and has hired legal heavyweights to defend its claim to intellectual property. Could this be a problem for Second Life, and hundreds of virtual worlds?
The Ravelong Award goes to the top Second Life DJ clubs which over the course of the year exhibited outstanding excellence in showcasing live DJ talent in an atmosphere that can only found in the virtual world. 2008 was an amazing year for SL Clubs and music communities. The scene, followers, and fans blew up in unbelievable proportions. Many people are always craving clubs and music venues where the focus is the live turntable djs and the electronic music culture.
