Monthly Archives: April 2024

Vocal Magic

April 24, 2024   Programming

In today’s pro­gramme, we present a selec­tion of music fea­tur­ing the human voice, from Mediæ­val times to the present.

Both sec­u­lar and a lit­tle sacred music is includ­ed, so today’s show will be quite var­ied, rang­ing between trou­ba­dour songs, Renais­sance choral works, tra­di­tion­al Eng­lish folk-songs sung by artists like the King’s Singers and Coope Boyes & Simp­son, and mod­ern works such as those of Karl Jenk­ins, Lib­era, The Swingle Singers, The Car­pen­ters, and Don­na McK­e­vit­t’s haunt­ing set­tings of Derek Jar­man’s poetry.

The pro­gramme focus­es pri­mar­i­ly on less­er-known works and on small­er vocal ensem­bles, rather than either solo or large-scale per­for­mances, but exam­ples of both are also included.

Then lat­er today, join us at noon or 4pm SLT/Pacific for Where Have You Been?, our series on places to vis­it and things to see around the Sec­ond Life Grid, plus Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton, every 4 hours from 4am Pacific/SLT.

“Peters­field Cham­ber Choir 004” by dom archer is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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The Magic of The Musical: Season 3 Begins!

April 20, 2024   Programming

We’re pleased to announce the start of the third sea­son of our orig­i­nal series of The Mag­ic of The Musi­cal, where your host Cale­do­nia Sky­tow­er takes a month­ly look at the world of musi­cal the­atre with songs, sto­ries and lore sur­round­ing some of our most pop­u­lar musicals.

Sat­ur­day, April 20 @ 2pm SLT/Pacific Time sees the first show of the sea­son:  Unex­pect­ed Broad­way. This show is now avail­able on Mix­cloud.

This episode fea­tures per­for­mances by actors and actress­es that you would not have expect­ed to find in a Broad­way musi­cal, but they were! In some cas­es we’ll fea­ture the pro­duc­tion, and in some the per­for­mance. Who knew that a quirky film actor start­ed out as a dancer for Liza Minel­li? Or that “the boy who lived” would appear in the Broad­way Revival of a 1961 Frank Loess­er musical?

Join our live audi­ence at Ceiluiradh Glen on Sat­ur­day at 2pm SLT — slurl: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Nowhereville/196/131/21 or tune in to Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio here on the web site, plug this URL into a net­work play­er: http://main.vcradio.org — or ask your smart speak­er to “Play Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio!”

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Relat­ed Videos (some men­tioned in this episode)

Christo­pher Walken Dances: “Weapon of Choice” Fat­boy Slim

Christo­pher Walken Dances: “Let’s Mis­be­have” from Pen­nies from Heaven

1776 (Round­about 1997) fea­tur­ing Brent Spin­er as John Adams

65th Annu­al Tonys — Daniel Rad­cliffe — Broth­er­hood of Man — How To Suc­ceed In Busi­ness 

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Jack Flanders in Do Angels Really Have Wings?

April 19, 2024   Programming

Tune in on Fri­day for the next episode of anoth­er excit­ing radio ser­i­al from our friends at ZBS Foun­da­tion: “Do Angels Real­ly Have Wings?” - in which Jack Flan­ders explores Heav­en — and Hell!

The com­plete adven­ture con­sists of six short five to ten-minute episodes, broad­cast at noon and 4pm Pacific/SLT on Fri­days.

Now read on…

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Tarot @ Teatime: The Rider Waite-Smith Deck

April 12, 2024   Programming

We’re pleased to intro­duce the new sea­son of our orig­i­nal series, Tarot @ Teatime, which airs every Sun­day and Thurs­day at 12 noon and 4pm SLT/Pacific.

In this new sea­son, your host Hon­ey Heart, PhD* pro­gress­es through the Waite-Smith deck — the most pop­u­lar of all Tarot decks — one card at a time.

For each, she dis­cuss­es a num­ber of fea­tures of the card: the Car­di­nal Direc­tion asso­ci­at­ed with the card, its Numero­log­i­cal sym­bol­ism, the Astro­log­i­cal influ­ences, the Ele­men­tal con­nec­tions, and the rela­tion­ship with Jun­gian arche­types. She even relates the card to Shake­spear­i­an char­ac­ters. Heart then casts and inter­prets a demon­stra­tion 3‑card read­ing fea­tur­ing the card and pro­vides hints and tips to help you gain your own under­stand­ing of the cards.

The Waite-Smith deck is the most pop­u­lar Tarot deck avail­able, and fea­tures the art­work of Pamela Col­man Smith (illus­trat­ed, from an image in The Crafts­man mag­a­zine). Hon­ey Heart’s com­men­tary includes a dis­cus­sion of the fea­tures of the card illus­tra­tions, and it may assist you in catch­ing the sub­tle nuances of these clas­sic illus­tra­tions to have today’s card in front of you. If you don’t own a RWS Tarot deck, you can find the card illus­tra­tions here.

Smith’s illus­tra­tions were influ­enced by many sources, notably the Sola Bus­ca tarot, the ear­li­est known com­plete Tarot deck.

In 1907, the Bus­ca-Ser­bel­loni fam­i­ly donat­ed black-and-white pho­tographs of all 78 cards to the British Muse­um (see Queen of Batons, right), where they were like­ly seen by A. E. Waite and Pamela Col­man Smith, inspir­ing their own tarot deck (1909 exam­ple Tem­per­ance, left).

The sim­i­lar­i­ties between the art­work of the Minor Arcana of the Waite-Smith deck and Sola-Bus­ca’s plain suits has led some schol­ars to sug­gest that Col­man Smith drew inspi­ra­tion from the ear­li­er work. Smith cre­at­ed the art for her deck two years after the acqui­si­tion of pho­tographs of the Sola-Bus­ca deck by the British Muse­um, and like­ly saw the cards on dis­play there. Notable sim­i­lar­i­ties include the Three of Swords card and the Ten of Wands card in the Rid­er deck, which is very sim­i­lar to the Ten of Swords card in the Sola-Bus­ca deck.

*Hon­ey Heart in first life has a doc­tor­ate in transper­son­al coun­sel­ing, with her dis­ser­ta­tion writ­ten on a phe­nom­e­non observed in Tarot.

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We’re now available in AAC

April 9, 2024   Station News

We are pleased to let you know that in addi­tion to our exist­ing mp3 audio stream, we can now be heard in AAC, which may offer improved qual­i­ty includ­ing bet­ter stereo and a clean­er sound, par­tic­u­lar­ly as we improve oth­er parts of our broad­cast chain to match.

Per­haps more impor­tant­ly, lis­ten­ers will expe­ri­ence low­er data usage as the AAC stream runs at 64kbps rather than the 128kbps that is used by the mp3 stream. We are cur­rent­ly upgrad­ing our mobile apps to play the AAC stream — watch this space! The 128kbps mp3 stream is unaffected.

To tune in to the AAC stream, set your play­er to https://streaming.live365.com/a93871_2 Some net­work play­ers (Winamp for exam­ple) won’t decode the AAC stream over an https path, so in that case use http://streaming.live365.com/a93871_2 An alter­na­tive is to use the short-cut http://aac.vcradio.org — but note that this does not work with all play­ers (VLC works fine)

NOTE: AAC is not avail­able in Sec­ond Life. Lis­ten­ers in Sec­ond Life and oth­er vir­tu­al envi­ron­ments that rely on the FMOD audio libraries should con­tin­ue to use the exist­ing mp3 stream as AAC is not sup­port­ed by this library (and appar­ent­ly nev­er will be). You can, of course, run an ordi­nary net­work play­er while you’re in-world.

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