Farrs Focus Edition 01

Farrs Focus edition# 01 By Mark Shilts (former Journey Webmaster) also known as MSDRUMS in Real life and Farrokh Vavoom in Second Life®

In this series I will focus on My Experiences in Second Life® as a designer, musician and virtual world builder.

Is it possible to promote major rock bands in Second Life?

Not only is it possible to promote major rock acts in second life but also with the right approach, it’s a slam-dunk!

My Wife Argus Collingwood (CJ Shilts) and I have been very involved in Second Life since 2006. For about a decade we were the Web development team for the World Famous rock band Journey. In 2007 Our Group built a virtual world called Journey Island which was hands down one of the most successful virtual worlds ever created. We built it to support the release of Journeys Revelation album and we carefully built it for the fans using our Para Viral Marketing approach. In fact every aspect of Journey Island had one single mission. Build a magical place where Journey fans can gather together to celebrate the music they love along with the rich history and community of the band. It was a huge success and broke every record imaginable for a virtual world. Journey was the first actively touring rock band to appear in public on property that they owned in Second Life. Here are some interesting stats from my server logs for all of you fellow web geeks out there:

The Paraviral Marketing Approach

I remember getting very excited the first time we got a million hits in one month on the Journey Music.com website. For many years we were used to getting about half a million hits each month. That’s not too bad because after all we’re talking Journey here They have always been a very popular band! Nothing could have prepared me for what was about to happen when we opened The Journey Island in Second Life. We used a technique that I call Paraviral Marketing. In just one year the combination of adding a gifted new singer, Arnel Pineta, a very melodic new album called Revelation, and a distribution deal with Wall Mart created the perfect environment for success. We created Journeys second life world as the critical glue to pull a lot of elements together on the web and this propelled the bands website to amazing levels of Web traffic and fan involvement.

In 2008 alone we had almost 2 million unique visitors to the website and thousands of visitors to Journey island. You could Visit Journey Island any time of the day or night and it was packed with fans listening to albums, watching videos talking about Journey with their fellow fans And planning real life gatherings at concerts

In July of 2008 the website combined with the Journey Forum received an amazing 70 million hits and for the entire year we averaged over 3 million hits per month, with an average of one hundred and seventy-two thousand unique visitors per month. Journeys Revelation album went platinum, their concerts sold out and we did it all on a single private estate right here in Second Life. This was all done before social media really existed. Just imagine what would happen now that we can add Facebook twitter My Space and others into the mix.

How do I know that the Journeys Second Life world was one of the primary drivers for this huge success? That’s easy just ask anyone who was there. When we shut down Journey Island we stopped hearing about Journey in Weekly CNN I reports as well as many of the other blogs and websites that followed the band so closely. Thousands of fans emailed us asking why Journey Island was gone and could we please bring it back. Unfortunately that decision was not ours to make or it would still be going stronger than ever, and still breaking records.

I’m pretty sure that most members of the band simply did not understand what kind of massive impact Second Life was having on their business. In truth I didn’t understand it my self until I started going through the server logs years after we closed the Journeys Second Life Island and the Journey Forum. I knew in my gut that it had been working really well, but I didn’t have the hard evidence until years after Journey Island was gone. Why didn’t I pull that data sooner? Bad Timing! When it really would have mattered I was in a hospital recovering from a brain injury. It’s as simple as that.

Argus and I Built The Echo Echo club in the Van Eyck Sim in Second Life in 2006 and it’s still going strong and our community grows every week. With the knowledge we have already gained from bringing Musicians into Second Life Our tiny little group of dedicated people here in Second Life could take any existing popular band with a dedicated online fan base and make them megastars almost overnight by building them a properly designed World in Second Life. Provided of course that the band completely buys into the idea of working living and performing in the virtual world. Without that commitment the idea simply will not work. Building and managing a Successful Virtual world for a rock band is very complex however, If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. Many have tried and most have failed. You have to build and manage it the right way and you have to have one single-minded goal. I’ll give everyone a hint… Build it for all of your fans and family; make your world magical and fun, toss all of your preconceptions in the garbage and your success can be guaranteed. I could spend hours going over do’s and don’ts but success is very easy in a world with no limits and where anything is possible, especially in today’s world where so many people throughout the world are looking for quality entertainment online.

Argus and I are not doing Web development any more because everyone is doing it now and I’m just not up to the task of doing that kind of work. I have been a musician for as long as I can remember but I have always preferred to stay in the background. Most people know me as a Webmaster, but I’m also a singer songwriter, BMI Recording Artist and multi-instrumentalist. Now that I’m disabled, I’m feeling the need to step out as a performer for the first time in a lot of years so performing in Second Life from the safety of my home is the obvious direction for me to go. I’m disabled because I went to sleep one evening in October of 2009 and woke up a couple of months later in a strange hospital where I was informed that I had nearly died from an undiagnosed brain tumor. It’s ok though; the tumor is benign and treatable. Many hours of emergency brain surgery saved my life but left me with some serious disabilities. It is now April of 2011 and I have accepted that I might have some balance, memory and concentration issues for the rest of my life. The surgeon that worked on me recommended that I simply live with the condition because any further surgery could be fatal. Evidently my brain does not like to be messed with, so that’s exactly what I’m doing. Fortunately I have also discovered that I didn’t loose anything on the art and intuition side. I can still sing and play drums and I’m working furiously at writing new songs, retraining my voice and getting my drums, guitar, bass and keyboard chops back together. I spent a decade not working on my own music because I was very busy Promoting Journey so now I’m playing catch up.

The truth is I've been a designer and musician most of my life. I’ve spent most of my career working for Tech companies like Clear-Com Intercom Systems, Dolby Laboratories and Lawrence Livermore Laboratories.

One Christmas around my 12th birthday I asked my Dad for a snare drum and to my surprise he bought me a 3-piece Ludwig Black Pearl Swirl Coated drum set. It was the best present I ever got! I then borrowed my dad’s record player along with his herb Alpert and the Tijuana brass Album called Whipped cream and other delights.

http://www.herbalpert.com/covers/cover_whipped_cream_1.html

The album cover probably influenced me to choose that album to start practicing drums to but hey but it worked for me! and I Immediately lost my self in the drums. many years later I realized that I could not have picked a better album to learn to play drums from. It had all the elements for shaping a good drummer. It had a little bit of jazz, solid breaks and great timing. I practiced for hours and hours and must have driven my mom absolutely crazy. When it was obvious to my parents That my drumming phase might last a while they signed me up for formal Drum lessons. My first Drum Teacher was a guy named Mickey Duke who was in the percussion department at Grossmont college near San Diego. Mickey was big on rudiments and required all of his students to sight read snare drum solos in our California state competitions. In fact for the first year of formal lessons I was not allowed to play anything but a snare drum. That’s ok though I had a full kit at home lol. I'll never forget my first sight-reading competition. Each student had to walk up on stage and play a snare drum solo chosen completely at random and sight read it cold from sheet music that we had never seen. If that was not enough pressure, when I got up on stage I learned that the judges that day were Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa. I thought I was going to crap my pants! I did not end up winning the Competition because my knees were knocking so badly, but it was a great experience. Music has always been like that for me, Little moments in time that I will always remember. One of those moments happened in a parking lot at Journeys rehearsal studio. We were all listening to CDs in the parking lot and I played one of my bands original recordings. Afterwards Deen Castronovo pulled me aside and said Bro I owe you an apology. Huh? I replied. He said you have worked for us for years and I had no idea you were a real drummer. I get hundreds of people coming up to me all the time telling me that they are drummers but you’re actually good. I don’t think that Deen will ever know how much that comment meant to me but Getting validation from arguably the best arena rock Drummer in the world meant a lot to me!

When my long time friend Ross Valory learned that I needed too sell My Drum set because I could not safely move them around he traded me a Brand New Roland V-Tour Drum Set for my Sonar Kit. That was a very nice thing for him to do and I love him dearly for it because I’m not supposed to lift anything as heavy as even a floor tom from my old kit and the Roland V-drums are much lighter, are very playable, and they sound great. Ross Probably already gave the Sonar Kit to another friend in need because That’s just how he is.

When I got the V-drums setup in our house I was overjoyed to find out that my muscle memory was still intact and that once I was sitting at my drum set, I could still play as long as I didn't think about it too much. This seems to be my new normal. When I first picked up my guitar I was surprised that I could not even remember how to tune it. Once I stopped thinking about it, my fingers started going to the right places and I found that I could still play. Once I started recovering a little I had a great Luthier Gordon Fava from Fava Guitars go completely through my trusty old Ibanez Artist and add the Roland GK Pickup so I could use my Roland GR-20 Guitar Synthesizer with it. This along with Sonar X1 Producer and my Vintage Alesis QS8 keyboard gives me a lot of flexibility for creating music. It’s far from the latest and greatest but it will do.

There is a saying in the Journey Family that goes like this. "If your thinking, your stinking" and I’m finding that to be a very true statement in my case. Ross has always delighted in taking me out of my comfort zone as a player. Now I am fully embracing that approach and doing a show every week in Second Life with my good friend and great rock DJ Raven Cinquetti He plays whatever he wants to play and I try to blend in on drums and vocals in real time and on the fly as a session musician often without having ever heard the song. To say that Raven keeps me on my toes would be quite an understatement. My only goal is to sound reasonably good for the audience and be entertaining.

For me personally, the shows that we do in Second Life are really my version of physical and mental rehab therapy combined with many hours of practice everyday. Most of my friends are famous musicians so the pressure to be great is always lingering in the back of my mind but I’m finding that I can push that aside now and just be me. It’s a great feeling!

Most people know us as Journeys Web Development Team because that's what we did for about a decade. It’s also what brought us into Second Life®. This turned out to be a godsend because despite my medical issues, In Second Life I can still do just about anything.

Our Group Here in Second Life is still intact and going strong and most of the People that made Journey Island so successful are still here with us. Were just waiting for another great band to step up and say we want to do that too!

If you want to catch one of our shows in Second Life just search groups for “Club Echo Echo” and be sure mature is checked. The group is set to open enrollment so all you have to do is join and you will be notified when we have an event.

The next editions of Farrs Focus will deal with what you need to know to get started living, working and performing in Second Life®

Until next time -- Farr

Farrokh.Vavoom@gmail.com