Live concert alternatives (virtual reality, streaming&Co)

At the moment, big crowds aren’t a particurly good idea, so usual concerts might be difficult in the next weeks months. Perhaps it might be time to investigate whether VR is up to the task by now?

Had a look to see whether there are solutions out there to hold live events in virtual reality. And indeed, there are first things out in the wild:




I know that @gbevin has already performed in SecondLife - which might come close (with the possibilities available back then). Has anybody experimented with any of these VR performing solutions? Or are there other interesting ones out there or on the horizon? (E.g. I heard that Facebook wants to announce something new regarding virtual meetup places soonish. Even if I’m a little sceptic with everything Facebook related I still want to know what this will be :slight_smile: )

Besides a new way to offer a remote audience a more “inside” and “together” feeling than via a flat screen, this might also be interesting for virtual practicing (or just jamming around together) rooms. Well, for more ambient stuff at least… :wink:

Do some of you already have VR headsets? (I have an old HTC Vive here and have pledged for a Pimax 8k-X about two years ago. It’s still not there, but getting closer now, probably April or Mai…).

For people who don’t have any VR headsets yet but consider it: The most well-rounded packages atm. are probably either the Oculus Quest (mobile or PC+cable based, supports inside-out tracking) or the Valve Index (PC+cable based, supports external Lightroom tracking) I think.

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Live coding event from 19th till 23rd
http://equinox.eulerroom.com/

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from a glance…Our friend @dkah is on Friday 20th -11:30h !! go, go , go!!

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Lines has a similar thread running, with posts from its members who are streaming etc.

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The problem with VR currently is that there’s no Mac support. And I don’t believe any of these platforms work on PSVR yet, either. It’s a very silo’d audience.

(I can neither afford to fix my PC, nor to buy another headset)

That’s true. According to rumours, Apple is working on their own AR solution. Time will tell…

Support for PSVR would be a clever move, given that it should still be the most wide spread VR HMD on the market. Most stuff in the collaborative live performing direction seems to be for Oculus though - e.g. the from first sight imho most promising Noys VR (Most Oculus content can also be used on SteamVR based headsets with ReVive).
The stuff also will get less heavy (that part already hot bette) and more “fashionable” over time. Think it’s here to stay in the long run.

Edit: Just had a look at the Noys VR FAQ - sounds promising:“Use our Blog & Mailinglist to stay updated on our advances for the HTC Vive, Windows MR & PSVR!”

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Jam Session VR also looks interesting - a virtual room full of virtual instruments, sequencers etc. to play with. One of the most defining aspects of a real jam session is still missing though it seems - playing together with others…
Still a lot of room and uncharted territory here…

I see very limited support for that in the near future.

I mean, multiple users manipulating a step sequencer can work. The pulse needn’t be synchronized between one user and the next for all users to edit the sequence and feel like the changes are arriving in realtime.

They just can’t solo over that sequence and expect others to hear it as they are playing. And beat juggling is likewise out. But either can work in a nonlinear editing sense.

It’s an interesting balance.

Yeah, e.g. drums would be particularly difficult. It might be better to have instruments that are more suitable for ambient music. There 30 ms latency or something might be more bearable.

Or playing layer by layer after each other, but being able to watch/listen to the others while they perform.

Live drums would be difficult. A drum loop would be easy.

If it’s a step sequencer, and the users are just pushing buttons on a virtuial grid to add and remove notes, that’s already nonlinear. Even on one computer. They’re defining events that will happen when the playhead reaches a given step.

Now, you can probably work some magic to sync the playheads on separate machines across the planet, but the thing is, it doesn’t matter.

All that matters is that, if I decide there’s to be a snare hit on beat 3 of this pattern, you hear a snare hit on beat 3 of this pattern. And if you placed a kick drum on 4, I’m going to hear that when my playhead reaches 4.

But maybe you were editing a different pattern while I did that. This also works.

Which brings us a step up, into meta-sequencing. Create a sequence of what order the patterns repeat in. Those decisions will also disseminate as they happen, and come into play when each pattern reaches the end of its loop. At whatever time that happens.

A level above that, we can try to be more expressive. Multiple players can record melodic solos at the same time, in full MPE. They just won’t hear each other until…

A level above that, the solos are arranged. Maybe they play one at a time. Maybe the focus jumps back and forth between different players. Doesn’t particularly matter – as those choices are made, the sequence adapts on each machine.

And so on.

You could have four or five seconds of latency, or be looping entirely different parts of the song. Collaborative production is very possible. And at the end of it, you’d have a completed track.

That’s very different from jamming in a room together, though.

And even more different from performing together on stage. Because the audience at a show is having a linear experience.

But if your physical gestures are recorded alongside the MIDI data, the audience could be forgiven for thinking that performance was created on the spot.

I dunno. 3am ramblings. I should sleep.

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^^Good ideas!

As far as I remember @gbevin was performing live in SecondLife - but as a single person, which takes away the sync issue between musicians but still allows interaction with the audience.
For solo acts (besides classic stuff like piano or guitar - which never gets old) synthesizers can be especially interesting. The modern church organ with many faces :slight_smile:

And as said, perhaps more ambient music could have a revival for bands :wink:

Yeah I think latency is a real issue currently for real time collaboration

Perhaps best approach ( for now) is the one used by endlessss where you contribute independent ‘takes’ and each contributor picks ones they like , develop it , and put it back in the pot.

It’s pretty bizarre that no one’s built a VR interface for VCV Rack yet.

Something like that (generating multi-track audio in real time) lends itself to highly individualized experiences through ambisonics. And you could really get up close in the “watching their hands” side of things, without crowding the performer.

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Ideas…

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Ohm Studio was an interesting first step towards collaborative DAWs. Unfortunately it didn’t take off.
The Bitwig guys were also announcing something along these lines in their initial 2.X roadmap. I could imagine that they wished they had worked on that feature with higher priority atm…
Sonar also got some related features, now that it belongs to Bandlab this makes sense of course. It’s Windows only though.
But the Live proposals are good in the regard that this should work with any daw!

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Yeah, I think Ableton 9 which was supposed to have that as well.

I don’t know if it’s survived the various buyouts and restructuring, but Indaba Music used to have a Java based DAW that ran on their site, built from the ground up for online collaboration. They had more traction than Ohm Studio, for whatever that’s worth.

Their web page mentions that they were bought from Splice, so perhaps the “Splice Studio” is the previous Indaba Music solution? (Never heard of it before)

I just found this, via a forum search on the midi manufacturers association website:

http://www.multiplayerpiano.com/

It’s horrifying.

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Cool! :slight_smile: Currently they try to play pictures of an exhibition - at least a few have a clue of the piece :slight_smile:

divkid is managing a list of events
https://divkidvideo.com/coronavirus-isolation-live-streams/

if your into modular, the ‘master’ is back streaming