CC DJ TRENCHMOUTH

Stella lays down a phat Creative Commons mix on the fly

Bent straw clenched tight between her teeth, Stella Trenchmouth powers up the Reloop and lays down a sample, and then another, and then yet another, until guitar riffs and percussion beats and synth loops are swirling and meshing together-- ushering in a new era of live SL music.  Because this isn't audio streamed into the world via Shoutcast (the traditional means for Second Life musicians), but mixed right there through a machine that stores enough tracks to perform an extended dance groove-- which is what she did earlier today, for an appreciative audience in Kula. 

Mixing for a mix-up crowd

Not any audience, but an after-party crowd from the Free Culture/Creative Commons' remixed art gallery show (report next week), a group uniquely disposed to enjoy Stella's musical and technical skills.  Her Reloop is a cartridge-based system that uploads up to 99 samples into memory, and the samples Stella sells in her starter kit are all CC-licensed.  From there it's a matter of weaving the tracks together, employing the audio faders to mix with added artistry.  The sound itself is stereophonic and locational, letting you fade some samples from either the left or right "speaker"-- a variation you can hear when you walk around the machine.  All of which suggests a new tool for performing live music in-world, perhaps the most ideal kind-- ripped and mixed right in front of an audience, like improvising in an audio sandbox.

But the most immediate challenge may be building a library of locally-grown samples.  "I've been trying to 'leak' it a bit first to other musicians," Stella tells me modestly, "so my not-so-good cartridges aren't the only ones out there."  So far, though she's sold a few dozen Reloops in a month on the market, those samples have been slow to emerge.

Following the lead of Nylon Pinkney, Stella's created a YouTube machinima demo of her technology:  view it here. 

Comments

[Relee Baysklef]

Now now Hammy, there's nothing new about in-world live performances.

Weren't you around in the old days for Lola Bombay's famous parties? She had music mixers back even before the vehicle LSL codes were added.

[Laukosarg Svarog]

Calling it Reloop was a nice touch! Copyright that name before Propellerheads get it !

And the real skill here is in the development of the audio loops themselves and that's a skill not to underestimated. So a skilled editor / producer / DJ with a good ear is the key, not the playback technology itself. This machine is really very cool indeed, but it's not new in SL.

The idea of a loop bank is good too especially if it was organised properly in categories with matching BPM, I would donate to that :)

... Who remembers Tribal Drumming ? Ace Cassidy's drum scripts were doing this almost 2 years ago.

Robbie Dingos instruments use the same methods.

After all this is the ONLY way it can be done in LSL, very basic sample looping is the only option we have.

Roll on some scriptable audio DSP hooks please ! And some basic MIDI controller events could make DJs lives a lot of fun ! ( given the limitations of MIDI accross a laggy internet ).

Are you listening LL ? any ideas ?

[rikomatic]

hey, that's me! (Purple guy in the 2nd picture.)

Great party! And great spinning, DJ Stella!

[Joe Conrad]

Yes...Hammy getting carried away again.

All this stuff has been around for ages, and as Lauk points out it is the sample bank design which is key, not the playback/mixer interface.

Honestly dude, you need to go back to journo school. Stop writing gushing innacurate fluff pieces.

[Stella Trenchmouth]

Wow, thanks Hamlet! Totally caught me off-guard.

I know reloop is hardly the first thing to use llLoopSoundMaster/Slave, those functions scream for stuff like this to exist. The only thing that might be different about mine is that it's all cartridge-driven, the samples are just copied to the machine on load. And maybe the volume faders, haven't seen those before. But anyway, yeah - not the first & hopefully not the last :)

...and I'd so love to see some sort of MIDI implementation in SL. MIDI Out could be a little wonky, with half the population hearing only the silly general twinktwonk bleeps, but MIDI In could make for some neat ways to control stuff in-world (like those note-playable instruments -- Robbie Dingo's hyperflute and Gerami Fizz's awesome trumpet / clarinet / harmonica / etc).

[Hamlet Au]

Obviously there's been other musical instruments and mixing machines before (and I've written about some of them). A cartridge-driven system which others can easily contribute to is indeed the most innovative thing here-- least I've never seen it tried before. Sorry I didn't make that distinction clear enough.

[Octal Khan]

Props to Trenchmouth on her efforts!

Last year I created an SL sample-loop based music studio to mimic my studio at home. You can check it out here:

secondlife://Shamrock/55/188/

and heres a pic:

http://sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73203

MIDI is tough, the latency is just too much. Even the sample-based stuff using LLloopSoundLMaster/Slave suffers too, but at least its sync-able.

[in kenzo]

I do not dance like that. But Hamlet does the snapshot dance!

http://inkenzo.blip.tv/

The Machinima CC:Remix of the last Free Culture event....thanks DJ Trenchmouth for letting me put music in your decks.

The CC event featured some very interesting art -- Espin Carroll's cube was very well done. I'd love to see more interactive art and remixes of all types coming together in Kula.

[rikomatic]

Awesome video, In Kenzo!