Website makeover!

The Pillowfish website has been redesigned, integrating this blog properly – so please update your RSS subscriptions to http://www.pillowfish.co.uk/?feed=rss2 . Good news is there’s now an RSS feed of our gig list too, plus improved navigation and a new look. Go and see!

Pillowfish hi-def video on Vimeo

Our first high definition video is now up on the HD video site Vimeo – it’s a live recording of our song ‘Wider’.

View it here: http://www.vimeo.com/2851064

It’s also uploading to our Youtube account right now, so should be on there any minute at http://www.youtube.com/pillowfishmusic.

Sunday 7th Dec – 1 year of Second Life gigging: anniversary party

It’s very nearly a year since our Second Life avatars were first rezzed into the metaverse, and started playing gigs in an entirely different way from how we’d been used to. It’s hard to believe it’s only a year – we’ve played in so many different places, met a lot of different people and changed a lot of things about the way we play. [Not to mention the way our avatars look!]

Pillowfish Rezday Party Poster

We’re having a Rezday Party to celebrate, at 12noon SLT [that's 8pm GMT] on Sunday 7th December – everyone welcome.

We’ll be playing live, and we’ll also be streaming in a few tracks by other musicians we like.

We’re holding it at our cafe, which is here:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Four%20Directions/129/229/23

Hope to see you there…

Virtual Worlds Conference Video Streaming

During a recent Second Life / Real Life conference in London last month we played a video gig at the Blarney Stone in Virtual Dublin, which was broadcast on a big screen in the Bedford Pub in real-life London as a demonstration of the technological developments in virtual music at the conference ‘icebreaker’ event.

Live performers in London also performed as avatars in Second Life, as well as some other SL performers.

There’s a write-up in the Metaverse Messenger, on page 19 of the Oct 28th issue….

New Web Browser Video Streaming

Having recently started streaming video as well as audio into Second Life, we’re branching out – using the live video website UStream we did our first video gig that was accessible via web browsers last week.

The Ustream interface includes an interactive text chat feature. We’ve embedded the whole lot – video and chat – onto a page on our website, so you can either watch it at http://www.pillowfish.co.uk/live_video_ustream.html – our ‘live’ page, or on the UStream site at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/pillowfish-live-gig.

You can see the schedule for these gigs on our online gig list, and there is also a Facebook group that you can join if you want to receive news and updates about them: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=86224170455.

The next scheduled event is on Sunday 19th Oct at 9pm BST – hope you can make it!

Whisky in the Dark photos

We have a new photo stream on Flickr- and we’ve got it started with some pictures taken by Jeaninne Mathilde at the Whisky in the Dark single launch party – you can view them at http://www.flickr.com/photos/pillowfish/.

Whisky in the Dark single release party TONIGHT!

Our new studio track Whisky in the Dark is released today as a download.

You can download it by signing up to our email list at http://pillowfish.co.uk/audio.html

The release party is being held tonight at 8pm BST at Therapy, on second life. Thanks to Raven Skall for hosting us!

“Seven Stolen Stars” on Proper’s Folk Rising 2 Compilation

Our track Seven Stolen Stars is included on the Folk Rising 2 compilation of up and coming folk acts signed to Proper Distribution. Since almost the entire English folk scene is distributed through Proper, there’s quite a selection. The CD is to be released on 7 July.

You can hear our track, and all the others that will be included in the compilation, on their MySpace:

http://www.myspace.com/propermusic

Why we play on Second Life Part 1: The sound is better

Having started performing in SL as a publicity/promotional exercise, we found that actually there are a number of ways in which playing gigs on second life is superior to most real life gigs available to not-totally-famous-yet acts.

In fact SL has been so much better for us that we’ve stopped taking the crappier gigs in RL, and as a result our RL gig list looks quite empty at the moment, but it’s just not worth our while doing rubbish RL gigs when we can do good ones in SL.

This is the first of a series of blog entries each outlining one way in which SL gigs are good and explaining why we no longer see SL as just promo, but actually an integral part of our music making.

Why we play on Second Life Part 1: The sound is better

Sound quality is important to us. The tone of the voices and instruments is a big part of our music, and we like it to be discernible to the audience. Clear sound to hear the lyrics is also important for our wordier songs, and of course, when we can hear ourselves properly, we play better.

We can get much better sound quality at a SL gig than at a typical RL gig. This is mostly because from a technical point of view a SL performance is much more like making a studio recording.

In SL we can use our best studio microphones and other equipment which are too expensive and fragile to take out to a gig at a outside venue, and we have total control over the mixing and signal processing, and can refine the settings over many performances. For RL gigs equipment has to be chosen for durability or avoiding feedback and the sound quality is much lower.

In SL the quality of the stream does limit the sound quality that can be achieved – even a 192k mp3 stream is not quite CD quality. However, it can still sound significantly better than any PA system we have ever used or heard at a RL gig.

Additionally most SL gigs have a sound engineer who is not familiar with our music (if they are even competent at all), and a sound system that is not optimised for it. Even when we put on our own gig with our own PA in RL, the sound quality is not as good as we can get in SL, for the other reasons above, although it does get quite a bit closer.

Both RL and SL have background noise, but in SL you can turn it off! We strongly encourage SL listeners to mute ambient sounds, or even all sounds except the music stream. Another advantage of SL is that people talking during the performance needn’t disturb those who want to listen since the talk is in text chat.

In actual practice the biggest limitation on the sound quality achievable in SL is the quality of the listeners playback system. Obviously listening on laptop speakers rather defeats all our efforts above. However, some of our listeners do use quite reasonably good systems. Watch out on Tom’s blog soon, for a post on the best ways to improve the sound from your computer.

The BIG exception to this whole SL vs RL sound quality issue is RL concerts where no amplification is required, the gig is in a room with pleasant acoustics, the audience is quiet, and there is minimal background noise. In other words – house concerts. House concerts (and well run small acoustic club guest nights) are the one type of gig we have found that give superior sound to SL. It’s one of the main reasons we keep banging on about house concerts.

So, come and listen on SL! or book us for a house concert!

Pillowfish recordings released on Creative Commons licence (free downloads)

We have released high quality 192kbps mp3 files of all our original studio recordings to date under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works Licence.

This means that they are available for free download from the Pillowfish audio page, where you can read more about what this form of licensing entails.

We do ask that if you enjoy the music and feel you get some value from it, that you pay us something to help us keep on making music.

The physical CDs and lossless format downloads will remain for sale in the normal way.

Common Knowledge by Pillowfish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at pillowfish.co.uk.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://pillowfish.co.uk.