Electronic music?...That's Techno...Right??

...Continued from previous post...



After the first rather successful appearance on the SL music scene Jess decided to start knocking on some doors and I also wanted to check out how other performers...performed....including adressing the audience and presenting their work.

You can learn a lot from watching other people doing their stuff..good things/bad things and you also have to keep in mind that even though that good thing worked for that performer it may not nescessarily be the thing for you to do.



First view on the SL live music scene


I once saw a documentary from Nashville telling about the thousands of musicians coming to the city every day hoping their dream will come through.

At some point in the documentary they drove down a street in Nashville and on every corner there was a guitarplayer and in between as well all hoping for that certain person to come by that could make their fortune. Many of them would have to try sell their equipment a month later to get money for a ticket home because it didnt work out for them.


When you first look at the many many performers in SL its like that street in Nashville with a lot of guitarplaying men and women. My guess is that approx 75% of the performing acts in SL is one person with a guitar but as I said...It's a guess.

Then later on you learn that there also are male and female singers that sing to backingtracks presenting wellknown songs and evergreens calling back memories for to the audience.

You will also find performers playing the piano and again presenting tunes and songs that people know and maybe have a memory or a feeling attached to.

Again my guess is that approx 90% of the above mentioned performers have two things in common:

1) They are persuing a dream through SL with more or less luck combined with more or less talent.

2) They all do covers of popular songs/melodies even rather new ones but the fact is that people hear something they already know.

How could I possibly get my own music out there when everything seemed to be like a family dinner or the local musician playing at the local bar?

Only one answer to that one: "Hard Work!!"


Presenting the music to the world

I read an article somewhere that stated the following: "The more different types of music you like to listen to tells you how openminded you are as a person".

I like that one and as I said in the previous post I like all music from Classic music to Hard Metal and those of you that have seen me at concerts in SL know that I attend to a lot of different music being played. If there is a melody and an idea in it...I am with you all the way.

I was about to learn that far from all people read the same article and shared the same views I have on music. Sometimes it was like when the very first synthesizer-composed music was presented and all the so-called experts shouted out:

"That is not music....I give it 6 months and then it is dead and forgotten!"

Heh, boy were they wrong or what!

We wanted to get out to as many people as possible realizing that not all would like what they heard but hoping to catch up a few fans along the way. It's more difficult to do that if the venueowners are unwilling to even have a short listen to what I had to offer. Many of the conversations were quite short and would be something like this in a shortened version ofcourse leaving out all the gestures from the place:

Me: "Hello, my name is Torben Asp and I was wondering if I could use your stage to present my music in SL. It's my own original compositions and something different from what you normally hear in SL."

Venueowner/manager: "Oh okay, what kind of music do you do?

Me: "It's instrumental music.....electronic....on synthesizers."

Venueowner/manager: "Electronic?...That's techno right?....Like a DJ?...Nah, I don't like techno sorry."

Me: "It's not techno, it's more soft than that...I play live on a synthesizer.....No DJ....ofcourse you can dance to some of it but some of my tunes are slow, dreamy and in my opinion beautiful....if you have 10 mins sometime I can play some for you?"

Venueowner/manager: "I don't think people here will like that kind of music so I will pass. Good luck".


Sigh!

Yea, it may seem like whining but when you have created something and would like people to give you feedback it is frustrating when you can't get the chance to present it. Anyway, back on the horse and move on.

Later on I did get a chance on other venues to present what I could do and they were amazed by the sound first of all and the compositions.

A lot of Open Mics....and then..

While scouting for venues I played a lot of open mics at The Forum that was owned by Jess Oranos. Open Mics mostly are 30 mins slots and it was a good way to train the performance, talk to people and presenting new stuff. Even today 1½ years later I love doing the open mics because you tend to meet new people that didnt even know you existed.

As the open mics went along and the people came listening I started to notice that i had some regulars at my small performances. Ah ok, the "small" performances now were close to an hour long because of new material being added.

Then it happened...my first concert "out of the house" so to speak.

It was one of the regulars that was opening a new club and as he loved my music he would like to have me performing at the Grand Opening of the place....Yahoo!!

We went to check out the place...always do that....and it was an Exotic Club but I requested to the owner that the girls would keep their clothes on at least for that hour the concert would last and there was no trouble with that.

The day arrived and it was great!!...Instead of playing for the usual 3 to 10 people I suddenly had 25 at a concert and got some new members in the fangroup as well.

Now you would think that a lot of people would come listen everytime they saw my name in the events list....ah ah.....remember that we like people that are openminded to music and ofcourse they listen to different types of music so you wouldnt be the winner everytime.;o)

5, 21, 8, 11, 32, 17, 2

Lottery numbers?

Nope, that is how different amounts of people you can have at your concert. If you should win on that combination of numbers I want a share though;o).

While the big numbers will make you feel like flying and the low numbers will make you feel depressed you always have to remember one thing....and I had a hard time with that in the beginning....: THEY are there because they love what YOU do..so give them the show they deserve and they will return to listen next time...or next time again. (openminded, remember?)

Shortly after my first concert at the exotic club I was having my first appearance on "The Rock".....actually its Rocky Shores...but everyone calls it "The Rock".

The performer before me...guitar....had pulled in a rather good crowd so I was happy about getting my music known to even more people.

Alas, when I started playing the first tune I noticed that people left one by one without even listening to it...I guess they heard the word...electronic...synthesizers and programmed....then they had judged it as being Techno...you know...like the venueowner we visited earlier.

The last 40 mins of the show I played for 5-6 people including the owner Ticious, some of her people there and Jess.....TA was not happy....but got through the concert and thanked the people that stayed.

Obviously it must have showed that I was sad that people left because afterwards Ticious said something like this to me: "Don't be sad because people left...Doesnt mean you are not good at what you do....People often expects a certain type of music here at Rocky Shores and your music is new to them and they have no relation to it....In time you will find the right audience for your music...Besides there can be many reasons why people left....For the record I loved listening to your music here at "The Rock"...Keep getting out there and you will get more people at your shows".

Now that is a venueowner you have to love! Ticious!.....thank you;o).

A year later I was back at Rocky Shores and we had a lot of people there......and they stayed!...Yay!

Is there anybody out there?

As time went by I started wondering if there were other people performing electronic music live in SL and that is when you learn the value of your fanbase. Many of them have been to several concerts around the grid and one day someone asked me: "Have you ever been at Cypress' concerts....I think you would like it and I would love for you two to meet."

Sadly I cannot remember the name of the lady that said it but she was right and getting to know Cypress Rosewood in SL has been an inspiring experience indeed.

I went to one of his concerts and was amazed by the soundpictures he painted in peoples minds and ofcourse I noticed a lot of people there...more than I would ever dream of having at the time.

The majority of people seemed to be from Elven sims and other fairytale areas in SL so I started wondering if that was the audience that would also love what I did.

Okay, home again from the concert thinking about what to do next and then I get an IM from Cypress saying that he had heard that I performed electronic music in SL and he would like to have me playing at a big event called ElvenAid 2008.

Now that was something. A lot of other artists would be playing on the lineup but I got to present my music to a large audience at a public event in SL.

It was a success....many people...nice comments and new people in the fangroup..I loved every minute of it.;o)

Later that year I also played at Yuri's Night 2008 arranged by Cypress and again many people listened and got in the group.

Did Cypress like my music?...I was not sure...but I do know that I blew him away when I composed "The Cypress Chronicles" in his honour and hauled him to Red Rock Mesa in SL for him to listen...and the best thing was that he never knew why untill I presented the tune....Me like to surprise!;o)

On monday night Cypress hosts an internetradio broadcast called "When Worlds Collide". It takes place both in SL and RL. In RL you can tune into the station and listen. If you are in SL you can go to the studiosite and see what is going on.

I was asked to appear on the show for a talk about music in SL and I would also be allowed to play 2 tunes of my own. A great opportunity to get heard by even more people.

The first appearance on the show was a disaster because of technical problems so I got another shot at it later in the year and that went far better.

Even though the first show was bad I did get to present my tunes and that was when I met Jana Kyomoon or rather.....she heard me for the first time.

It turned out she also performed electronic music in SL so now all of a sudden we were three people performing different types of electronic music so it was only natural that we stuck together and supported each other.

Jana and I did some back to back concerts and we called us "The Dynamic Duo". People loved those shows because we changed stream every 30 mins. After a long pause we have started doing them again but as I cannot fit into the Batman costume anymore we now call them "The Swap Team" so look for that name in Events and you will get 2 hours of the best electronic music there is...played live!
Oh, I also composed a tune for Jana close to her style of music called, "Mental Journey" which I belive she was rather proud of. You never know for sure with those UK people, heh.

The sum of it all

I started performing in October 2007 alone and not knowing how it would all turn out. Now it was summer 2008 and things were really starting to move ahead.

I was selling MP3's in SL, I got my website torbenasp.com up and running, I performed at SL5B which is a huge SL birthday event, I composed a tune (Luminaria) for the Relay For Life event going on every year in July and even got to perform it at their livevenues, I got my músic on CDBaby.

Jana, Cypress and I started to do Mini E-Fests every month at my venue called Ethereal and we still do.

October 2008 I had my one year anniv. as a muscian in SL and we launched the first of many to come TA's E-music Festivals with 12 hours of different music (openminded...yes?) through the day. I also got to the 200th concert mark in October 2008 not counting the many open mics that went along with them.

Now its already summer again but 2009 and the last 6 months have been great all in all. The fan group is of a nice size and I also have a mailllist for the people that are full on groups...and they are many.

The concerts I have done have been well-attended mostly but ofcourse numbers vary a lot From 10 to 57, heh...but I am honoured to play for every single person that attend my concerts and always amazed when I can gather 20 people for a 30 mins show.

Let me end this long and tiring novel before it comes to an even longer series of books, Yikes!

I would never have gotten to where I am today without the love and support from all of my fans, many venueowners, the so-called non-political fractions in SL, Cypress, Jana but most of all the ever hard working, always caring and the one that said: "...And I wanna hear no excuses!"

Jess Oranos!

Me love you big time! ;o)

***In the following posts I will talk about different aspects of the live scene in SL as I have experienced them and once in a while I will come with reviews of concerts I have attended inworld and I go to a lot - Stay Tuned!***

-TA-

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...

Got meself a blog...yay!!

Hey there everyone!

So I got a blog place so I can share some of my views and opinions with you.....maybe no one will ever read it....but hey....Venting is free..and good for ya.

-TA-