Summing up (2½ years...Geeez!)

It begins

Now just to get started on this blog I will try to look back on the past 2½ years in SL from when I got "ruthed" the first time. (Edit. Note: Ruthed was the way we all looked before we discovered skins, shapes and Xcite)

I started my SL Career on the dancepads on some dance island where they had music streams running all the time. So my first goal was to find out how to collect L$. It's amazing how happy you can get when you get past 10 L$ the first time.
Later on I discovered the multi games and the money started coming in faster which allowed you to buy stuff with some sort of quality. The best thing you can say about the freebie items you meet in the beginning is that they will increase the number on your inventory items and that's about it.

My first land

After approx. 2 months I could buy my first plot of land...a 512 sqm which is the smallest plot to live on in SL...but again...TA was happy...He got something....moved on so to speak. I even build my first house there and was damn proud of it....though if you look at it today it looked like a Cargo Waggon flying in midair.
Soon it got too small though so I was always looking for something with more room and space. I wanted a club!!

The Yard Club

The first version of The Yard Club opened the doors in april 2007 and was no success what so ever but it was a great learning experience and besides that I got some great inputs and help from people around me at the time and I am forever grateful for that. I even learned that there was such a thing called Events List...yay!
At first The Yard was a club...running music streams as I knew it from the dance island but soon I learned that I needed to have live dj's to try to increase the number of visitors.

So while moving to bigger land and building a bigger club (edit. note: I have always build my own stuff...simple...but functional) I started looking for live dj's in SL and I tell you that it's a jungle out there. I was lucky in finding mostly reliable ones but also met some not so reliable and that is exactly as you would experience it in RL too. I interviewed a lot of "Best DJ" in SL but you would be surprised how often a thing as "being on time" slipped their minds. Well, in time I got it narrowed down to the reliable ones and we had great fun when they were working at The Yard Club.
During that period I also had several dancers at the club and they were a great support in downtimes and happy with me in uptimes. We often talked about it being like a home or family business and I can't thank them enough for that time...it was wonderful!! You know who you are.
Then someone mentioned to me that there actually were live music in SL...Singers singing to backingtracks and musicians playing guitar streaming live into SL. Now that I had to check out and started my research.

The Yard Club as a music venue

A new world opened to me. Now I could actually cover all of my music interests by having all kinds of performers at The Yard and not only the DJ's and their choice of music. (Edit. note: My musictaste ranges from classic music to Metal...and then some...if there's a melody in it...I am with ya.)
Of course the pricing were a lot different but it was worth it as to experiencing that side of the music scene in SL. Already at the first concert one of the audience shouted out to me: "Great Venue!....Where's the venuetipjar?" So obviously I was missing out on some lindens there and had to get one of those up.
(edit note: I will talk about my view on venuecosts and income in a later post)

The Yard Club continued to grow...different shapes...different lands.....different builds and some even postulated that I changed too much and maybe they were right...one thing was certain though. I never build the same Yard Club twice and there have been a few;o).

A thought entered my mind. Could I use the SL platform to present my own music?

Rehearsal, rehearsal and...erh...rehearsal!

I have always been good at composing and especially synthesizers is my fav instrument. So many possibilities and with the Reason Software you can have a million dollar studio on your PC..woohoo!!
Even though I started composing seriously in 1998 my music never left the bedroom.
Okay, I had some of it uploaded to different sites but the SL music scene seemed to be a lot more exciting and you could get feedback at once while performing.
To get started I needed some info and I got great help from Summer Serra of the FCMC about how to stream into SL. It turned out to be quite simple so we got that settled. Now to the hard part.
Ofcourse I knew my compositions by heart...but...when you suddenly have to present it live...you need to rehearse....a lot....to get it right. As the tempo of the music, the backgroundstuff, the effects, is pre-programmed there is no room for mistakes on the main synth during a liveconcert...and no...it is of no help that you programmed the whole shit yourself, trust me.
3½ months of rehearsal, changing a bit here and a bit there, putting in small breaks so I could change the instrument I wanted to play, drinking tons of coffee...(yea, sometimes coffee is God!)and finally I was satisfied with the sound and presentation.....and then it struck me:
What if they don't like what I do?

The doubt thing is probably one of my worst enemies when it comes to just going out there and present what you've got.
Luckily Jess Oranos was around.

The First Performance.

Jess incidentially walked into The Yard Club one day when I was playing for fun over the stream I used at the venue. I already knew her through some time and she was one of my best friends and now she was about to become the very reason why I am performing in SL today.
She asked me if it was the internetradio playing on stream and when I said no, she was surprised and told me how amazing the sound was and how beautiful the melodies were.
That lifted me up because now one person liked it....there ought to be a few more out there. Next thing she said was that she was planning on doing an open mic at her Forum....and she wanted me in it...without discussion.;o) She had another artist lined up but it turned out that I was the only one at the show...and...it was great!!
Not many people ofcourse but the ones there said that it was great to listen to something different from the normal livemusic in SL.
TA was happy...again something was accomplished...and a new path was chosen in SL.

To be continued...