Live Bitstream Boogie Blues in Metaplace

Herald hosts real-time alternative blues show tonight

by Pixeleen Mistral, Arts and Entertainment desk

Internet-mediated blues musicians Komuso Tokugawa (Tokyo),  Hathead Rickenbacker (Toronto), and Noma Falta (Atlanta)  are scheduled to make a special live appearance at the Alphaville Herald’s Metaplace newsroom makeover party tonight May 22 at 8pm EDT / 5pm PDT. 

a recent Bitstream Boogie show the Juke Joint in Second Life

Komuso is well known for sim-filling concerts in Second Life, and helped with a shoutcast stream soundcheck of the Herald’s new DJ booth earlier this week. Once the soundcheck was complete, we talked, and after some negotiation arrangements were made to provide Cristal in the green room - none of that Moët crap here at the Herald - and break in the Herald's Metaplace dance floor in style.

The geographically distributed blues trio perform live over teh Intrawebs and are expected to help us test the avatar limits in Metaplace. In preparation, the Herald is making arrangements to acquire a $9.95 USD Metaplace “day pass” to raise the our office space’s avatar cap from 20 to 100. One of the approaches Metaplace is taking to monetize the experience is to offer short-term leases of higher avatar capacity to supliment the basic free and premium account limits.

Is the future of music to be found in touring bands visiting virtual worlds? Will the blues stain Dalian Hansen’s white-on-white dance floor? Can Audrey from typesetting get the M&M's for the green room color-sorted in time for the show? Will Philip Linden join the jam once he finally gets his guitar in tune?

Philip lags the bar by rocking a prim-heavy Flying V?

Catch the hottest live blues trio in the Metaverse - but maybe not Philip Linden - for a real time musical collaboration across the internet from three countries.

Komuso Tokugawa on vocals, harmonica and guitar live from Tokyo
Hathead Rickenbacker on piano live from Toronto
Noma Falta live from Atlanta on Bass/Vocals

Comments

[Suzie Skybeam]

"In Soviet Metaplace, party crashes you." -- Tizzers

On Friday night, the Herald's new offices were inaugurated in fine style, with VIP celebrities both real and fake (Pixeleen, Raph Koster, Cuppycake, Tizzers, PLinden - at least one of these people may not have been who they claimed to be); a snowball fight; live music from Komuso Tokugawa, Hathead Rickenbacker, Noma Falta; and plenty of Japanese pop and anime sound-tracks from the DJ booth.

Thanks to Pixeleen's purchase of a Metaplace "Event Pass", the world supported over 30 concurrent users with no noticeable lag, even when the snowballs started flying.

The only slight hitch was that most people found that the client software froze solid every ten minutes, "just like Second Life in the old days". After some frantic last-minute debugging behind the scenes by Metaplace staff, Cuppycake announced they'd pushed out a bug-fixed client mid-party.

Thanks to everyone involved!

[HatHead Rickenbacker]

I had tons of fun - thanks to Cuppycake, the Alphaville Herald and everyone who came by the show! See you again in Metaplace!

[Komuso Tokugawa]

MetaBoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee;-))

http://sonicviz.com/wordpress/2009/05/22/metaplace-boogie-to-musicrise/