Thanks to Dusan Writer for pointing out this CNN story about one of SL’s well respected live musicians. So nice to see some real, positive coverage of SL popping into the mainstream Media.

Lorin Tone and Madcow Cosmos have created a band of cute, quirky avatars based on musical instruments. Not only do they look musical, they ARE musical. Get several of these awesome avs together and you can all join together to make music. Drums, Tuba, trombone, cymbals, clarinet, whistle and others round out the band.

Bandbots – Second Life Musical Avatars from Chantal Harvey on Vimeo.

The avs use a series of sampled music loops, each with many variations – some can even loop more than one sample at a time. For instance, the Drummer Av has Drums, Drum n Bass, FX, Bhangra Boxes and Bass lines to mix together.  Each sample is made to work with the other sounds so that whatever you play will be in tune and synchronized.  With a full band of avs there would be a crazy number of variations to work with. Super cute, too. Love these things!

You can get your own Bandbot at Lorin’s Sound Shack or Madcow’s Primordial Soup and Sandwich.  Anyone wanna Jam?

Here’s a burst of energy and fun to brighten up your virtual day. The Fuzznuts are a tiny cover band and this is their rendition of the Ting Ting’s That’s Not My Name. Chaffro has several other really cool SL machinimas, including a tiny version of Thriller.  Tiny Power!

What a great show! If ya missed it you can watch the recorded version of the live stream above. The music starts about 2 minutes into the video.

Here’s a beautiful, peaceful break from all the chaos of the SL grid this past week. Niko Donburi plays one of his wonderful guitar pieces and wanders around his SL parcel. Niko is probably most well known for his satirical songs about life on the grid – some call him the Weird Al of SL – but Weird Al never played the guitar like this! :) Why not check out his blog or listen to a few more of his songs at Last.fm.

Niko played at one of my New World Gallery openings, shoot, probably like 2 years ago now. It was a great show and I’ll always remember how his songs about SL really struck a chord with the audience. They seemed to bring us all together and remind us what a wonderful community we’ve created.

Multi-Niko at the New World Gallery