Start Your Music Career in Second Life

Let´s start right from the beginning. Second Life is a kind of online community where people from all over the world meet and interact in a virtual 3-D reality. You can create your own avatar with its unique shape, style, moves and clothes. There are countless ways to be creative in this world: you can build things like clothes, jewelry or even skyscrapers, create gestures and animations, run a club or bar and lots more.But the most important thing to us is, you can make live music! It´s just like playing in your living-room with some of your friends, sitting together and having fun. Since Second Life invented the possibility of live streaming, the crowd of music enthusiasts and artists is growing every day.

Second Life´s Basic Account is completely free of charge. You don´t need a premium account for the things in this lens. Second LIfe has its own currency, the L$ (Linden-Dollar, Linden Lab is the company that runs SL). The exchange rate is about 270 L$ for 1 US$.

BUT : You DO NOT need to buy L$! You can EARN them!

Before setting up your free basic account, please check that your PC meets the system requirements of Second Life. You can find the recommended settings by clicking on the "Help" tab of SL´s main screen.

In most cases, all you need is a microphone. I´m not that deep into technical stuff to tell you what´s the best to use. Some just sing through their built-in Laptop-Mic or a headset. That´s ok to start off because the first steps you will make in SL´s music scene lead you to one of the amazing Karaoke Bars.
That´s what i´m using: a 100 $ electric guitar with an FX-device, a little combo that allows plugging in a guitar and a mic and has a line-out/headphones jack. I connect the combo via the line-out to my line-in on the Laptop.
My microphone is a 30 $ VIVANCO.
So, if you just sing or/and play acoustic guitar, all you need is a single microphone. I also use headphones, because you can concentrate much better on your voice and it´s easier to sing when you eliminate background noises.

That´s all i use. You can check out what it sounds like by watching one of my videos. (the crackling noise results of compression of the video)

After you installed the Second Life Client Software it´s time to get your computer ready for streaming. All you need is the "BUTT", that´s short for "Broadcast Using This Tool". This little program makes it possible to stream audio files into the www in realtime. It´s freeware and very easy to handle. This is the download link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/butt/files
After you installed this software it´s time to make some preferences. Watch the video below to setup BUTT.

The next step depends on what you want to do. Get on stage with your originals? Be an Elvis impersonator? Amaze us with your virtuos guitar skills? Maybe you want to play or sing along to existing music. Most musicians in Second Life use backing tracks, that are music tracks that come without the vocals or the lead guitar. It´s easy to use...just play them through your media player. Remember? All sounds that your PC puts out will be broadcasted if you have selected "stereomix" in your preferences. But where to get backing tracks?

1. Online video communities like YouTube or MyVideo contain a big variety of karaoke tracks. Most of them include the lyrics of the song. But for the reason that the videos have to be compressed to upload them, the music may not be in the desired quality. Furthermore some of those videos just include a midi sound. Anyway, you can find lots of useful tracks and videos there.

2. Make your own backing track! You can easily create your own accompaniment. All you need is a free software called Audacity. You can record all the sounds playing on your PC or Laptop, add effects and filters and so on. Audacity supports all kind of music formats. You even can eliminate the vocals of an existing mp3-file. If you have a keyboard or play guitar, just plug it into your computer and start recording. It's an easy to handle program and there are lots of tutorials and help throughout the web. It's also a great way to bring your originals to a professional sounding style. You can download audacity here:
Audacity

3. If you can't find anything suitable on YouTube or are not that deep into audio-recording stuff, here is another possibility: get high quality backing tracks from one of the providers on the internet. Those tunes come in cd-quality and you can choose from more than 15.000 tracks. This is the fastest and easiest way, and for less than a dollar per download you get the best music for your performances. Here´s a source for high quality backing tracks:
The Karaoke Channel

We are ready now ! Let´s find a place to get on stage and make music !
The easiest way: Log in to Second Life, click the search button at the bottom of the window and a new browser will open. This is the SL search. It´s a kind of Google for SL. There are several tabs and we want to know more about "EVENTS". So, click it!
Click on the drop down menu "Categories" and select "Live Music" . Now enter one of these two keywords: Karaoke or Open Mic.
A list of all upcoming events will show up. If you click on an item the details will be shown on the right side of the window. You can immediately get to the event by clicking on "Teleport"
REMEBER: all the displayed times in the schedule are Second Life Time wich is the same as Pacific Standard Time!

I recommend to start at a location called "The O-Lounge". This Karaoke bar is open 24/7 and there are peole most of the time. Its owner is Canipanic Maslow, a nice and cool guy who has a big heart for all kind of music and musicians. If you want to get on stage just talk to him or one of the people in the bar.

You can make your first steps in there... and you should! There´s no need of stage fright or getting nervous. Mistakes are a MUST! Think like that: you are a human being and humans make mistakes. If you don´t make mistakes the people may believe that there´s a cd playing and not a live musician. Try out your stuff, you can get on the stage as many times as you want...sing one song...hear what the crowd says, ask for feedback, feel good, listen to one or two other singers and then get on stage again with another song...you will become more and more self-confident and you will forget about the fact, that there is an audience listening to you. IT`S GREAT!

Most venues in Second Life have open mics (once a week). This is a way for the owner of the venue to hear new talents and make contracts with them for weekly shows. Some let you play 3 songs, some give you 15 or 30 minutes or even an hour to play. So , if you go to open mics , be sure that you have at least 3 songs you can perform. Usually you can use the land owners stream.

These are two ways to earn your first money in Second Life. I recommend to spend this money on your own stream. Two reasons: you never have to change the settings of your streaming software and not all land owners have a stream that they can give to the musicians.

There are lots of stream providers in SL. The average price is about 1000 L$ for 4 weeks and 100 listeners. You can earn this sum in one show, so don´t worry about buying a stream. Just talk to other musicians, find out what they use and compare.

YOU MADE IT ! Hope to see you on the stage, soon!