Interview with SirSaxy: Part 2
Part of the "VR is Alive!" Artist Spotlight Series
We are fortunate to have SirSaxy (he/him) joining us in part two of our interview (part one here) to chat about his creations and performances in social VR as a musician!
I was very excited to be a part of the Welcome to the Metaverse music video by being able to join in the audience while that was recorded. Can you tell me more about that process with Bigger Better Meta?
For me, when I do stuff, I always want to see how far I can take it. Especially with VR, I want to see what impact VR can actually have on the world. Not just look at it like a novelty thing where I'm jumping in and I look at it and I'm like, “ooh, this is cool”, but I actually want to see it do real things because I think it does have value. That said, when the music video thing came about, it really just started as me doing an open mic one night in VR and then I went to the Soul Kitchen where Soul Gee was playing a beat, and I just started playing over it. And then he was like, all right, well, he liked what I played. And then I went and started recording little things here and there and then he chopped it up and we came up with a melody. Then Soul Gee was working with DJ Nina Creese at the time and they were trying to do something since they were both DJs.
Basically she sang on it after we kind of put a lot of different things together and it just came and sounded like a really good song. And so for me, like I said, I want to demonstrate what VR can actually do. I went and read up on how to put music out and the release process and all that stuff. We actually put the song out later and I was like, you know what? You could also do a music video. Why not? So then Stovert came in and then we paid him to do that first video and he did a really good job of it. But I also wanted to make it so that the community was involved too. I wanted it to be something that everybody championed and it wasn't just like, hey, look what these people did. Because there’s plenty of people who've done different things in VR. But I wanted it to be something that the entire community could be proud of that they were a part of and witnessed. That's where having a music video in these different places and having everybody involved in it came from. I really wanted it, like I said, to demonstrate that real things could come out of VR. And that's sort of what we did with the second one too. We just did it at a higher level of quality than the first one with the Love with the Avatar video.
But yeah, we sought out the same thing. And Soul Gee had industry connections. I mean, there were a few people involved in that one. When we wanted to do a second song, we started to really get into writing because NuYorkNik, Nancy Fletcher, she sang on that second song. Generally that was one of those songs where we did like a real studio session and a writer's room, that kind of thing. Putting all the lyrics together, the melodies, and that song, in my opinion, demonstrated that you could really replicate the things you do in real life in VR and have that same experience.
I'm thinking of how many worlds of yours that I remember visiting in AltspaceVR. I remember the Rooftop, Saturdays at Saxy’s, the Mardi Gras world, and I think there's one other world that I'm not remembering, so I'm curious: How many worlds do you still have uploaded in social VR now after AltspaceVR?
Well, a lot of them that I created, like I mentioned, are with an event or some kind of experience in mind. A lot of them I may have used like maybe once or twice, so there are quite a few. I'd say maybe 10 to 15. I think I may have moved one or two. I mean, one of the things is that Spatial, I wasn't a fan of their event experience, like with the audio and all that kind of stuff. Then you had to pay money to do hosting, so like I wasn't a huge fan of how Spatial did it, so I didn't upload my worlds to Spatial. But I mean there's this one for VRChat, and I think that might be it.
Are they all backed up or are some in the AltspaceVR graveyard?
Yeah, all of them are backed up. They are just collecting dust on my computer. It would just be a matter of converting them over to whatever platform I wanted to use and then uploading them.
For your upload of Freestyle Power Hour, how different is it compared to the one in AltspaceVR?
I mean it's pretty much one-to-one, like all the pictures and everything are the same. I did upload it to VRChat before they announced the AltspaceVR closure, I kind of knew what was coming. I've been in tech long enough to kind of see the writing on the wall. So I uploaded it the fall or winter time, like 2022, just to see if I could do it. I just shared it with Soul Gee, I can't remember who he was working with, but they went and added all of the other things in there, the widgets and stuff to do the events and everything.
Can you talk more about your experience with different ages? I know in AltspaceVR it was different compared to VRChat in terms of age ranges and different events that were tailored for each one.
I never really focused on age ranges. I think, like I said before, that things for more culturally specific events or experiences, I just did what I did based off of my ideas. And so they're probably naturally going to resonate with people who are around my age or older. That said, I didn't really seek out when we did different events to have a particular age range. And I think that goes for the way that I ran the events as well. They just kind of naturally—especially on Altspace—kind of naturally weeded themselves out where this certain group is going to be in the room and people who aren't interested are probably not going to spend much time there if they do come in. It just kind of naturally curated itself as far as the audience demographic goes.
Anything you want to say in general to the social VR audience—both already in VR and prospective audiences for social VR—about the state of things here?
I would say the thing that I find value in when it comes to social VR is just experience. And I know that's a subjective thing because I work in user experience, but everything that I've done in VR has been about experience. Even with this space, the fact that you start off in an alley and then you make your way in here, I did that intentionally to tell a story for you to feel like you're in some other space and that there's a larger context around where the event is happening. I really want to create a story for people to be inside of.
I don't feel like that kind of stuff is making it to the people who make decisions and I'm sure there are others like me who see the value in VR. I really do hope that we get to a point where we're able to have the tools and the things necessary to not only build, because I know people can build that stuff now, but to share that component of the VR experience with the outside world. It's not just that you put on a headset and put on a black hole of novelty that only these “VR people” use. It’s to really communicate what there is about VR that people can find value in, whether you are in a headset or not. I think that's where we start to gain some level of commonplace within society, some level of acceptance. When you can actually communicate that the components of VR aren't just about the equipment, if that makes sense.
Are there any new worlds you're building right now that you're able to say more about? And how can we stay updated with what you're doing in social VR?
Well, I have not been doing anything. This is the first time I've put my headset on in like, maybe three times in the last four months or so. Five months. Because what I did was very centric around like music and events and like that kind of thing. I've been a musician for over two decades, and I remember in undergrad—I was in computer science, so we had to do four and a half years, nine semesters—I was in the band for four of those years, but the fall of my last year, I remember going to a music school and I remember going to a football game. Me and my friends, we…I didn't know how to get into the stadium. I had to figure out how I had been in the stadium for all these games for four years, and didn't know how to get into the stadium. I didn't know what a ticket thing was, how to get tickets, because I was in the band and we just marched in every time.
The reason I use that example is because throughout my whole career, if you want to call it that, of being a musician, I've always been on stage or performing or being a part of the production. I've never really been a person that just kind of goes to stuff and attends things. I think that's what my relationship with VR is, is I like to produce things, I like to create, I like to build. And when I don't have the stuff I need, or, you know, like I said before, if it's too involved or so much work to just do those things, then that's where real life kind of has a lower barrier to entry. Like, I'm doing weddings, I have an event and I'm performing that tomorrow. I can't really bring myself to build and do all this stuff in here if the stuff there isn't there to make it worthwhile. So yeah, I still have to say I haven't been working on too much VR stuff lately.
I do have an idea for something that I could do, which was like creating a companion experience to go along with like maybe sci-fi stories or things like that. But I don't know enough about building from an abstract perspective, like building from scratch or building something that is, you know, original as far as like all the components of it to make my own. I don't know if it's a standalone app or a game or, you know, something in VRChat, but my skills aren't really there to be able to create an original experience on that level, I think. But that is an idea of something that I was thinking about trying to do.
Is that a long-term goal of yours in the next, let's say five years or so?
I don't know because, like I said, one of the things that I wouldn't want to do is just build it and then nobody sees it. I want all of the components to be there, like where there's a way for people who maybe not have a headset to get one or rent one or I don't know, go somewhere and get that experience. I'm thinking about it from a high level, not necessarily just my own project, but what it would be like for somebody to just be able to experience a book or a story, versus listening to an audiobook or reading it on the pages. Those are the kinds of things for me when it comes to emerging tech and VR specifically that I want to see being capitalized on. Not just museums or glorified art galleries. That's to me what Horizon Worlds is right now. All of these are like “I built this, come see it”. It's like once you've seen it, cool. What's your incentive for coming back to it?
For me, I want to create the kind of stuff that has stuff people want to revisit and come back to over and over again. Going back to the whole book thing or experiencing stories in VR, that's the kind of thing that I would want to see all of the different pieces to. Maybe somebody's listening to an audiobook while they're in the space that fits that particular chapter or something. Like that's the kind of stuff that I would want to see happen. It's like going inside of a movie almost and then the action plays out around you.
Can you tell me more about where the name Sir Saxy comes from?
I honestly don't remember. It's just like something I came up with at one point and started just using it, you know, different accounts and that kind of thing. Then I just stuck with it. That was just like my name for whatever platform I was on and then I just ran with it. Then it made sense, as far as my music and stuff I put out, to just use that as my stage name.
I've enjoyed many of your experiences and performances. You perform with different kinds of saxophones too, like the electric saxophone, which I haven't actually seen in person before. It's pretty interesting.
Well, that was like one of those….I'm really into problems. One of them, I guess, is when I have this relationship with the tech space in general, I just like solving problems. And so it was basically a solution to an issue I had, which was that I couldn't play my actual saxophone inside an apartment. So I didn't have anywhere to practice. I was going to like parking lots and stuff in Atlanta, but then everybody's got security now and charges for parking. That was basically my solution: For one, practicing indoors. But then two, it just kind of extended itself into VR because I was able to then perform digitally and then just port my audio into the virtual reality space. It was definitely a nice, convenient thing being able to have that and to use it to perform because otherwise, I mean, I don't really know how I would have accomplished that.
I'm curious about how much more you'd like to see with performance audio quality and quality of life options like sheet music.
I know that a lot of this stuff is very obscure. I find myself a lot of times being like the one person I know who's trying to do this particular thing because a lot of what I'm trying to do is very specific to what I want to do. That said, I feel like going back to my earlier comment about how a lot of times the musicians and people like that are afterthoughts when it comes to these platforms. Those are the kinds of things like you have to build in order to make the space ready for those kinds of people to be in here. So I don't use sheet music that much because I oftentimes play by ear and I play a lot of music that most likely there isn't any sheet music out there for it. Then I'm also playing a lot of things from memory, which is something I've done since growing up playing in church where we didn't have music written and everything was memorized. Being in the HBCU marching band, learning dozens of songs and everything's memorized. So sheet music, even though I can read sheet music, it's always been like unnecessary for the most part. That said though, when I do want to use it it’s for things that are a little bit lengthy, more complex, like jazz and that kind of stuff. There isn't anything out there that allows me to look at sheet music and flip the pages as I go. If I want to use a platform that isn't specifically designed for musicians. That would be something I would like to see if there was a plugin or a tool or something like that in VR where I could play the sheet music.
I mean, there are specific challenges when it comes to playing an instrument that haven't been addressed, which are like, your hands are occupied by your instrument. How do you do other things when your hands are occupied, right? Another thing is audio levels. Going back to the music performance, the audio stuff in AltspaceVR was a huge issue for a long time because it was like, alright, there's echo. How do you still solve that? Is my audio coming through? And how do I know if it's coming through? Maybe my audio levels aren't good. How do I know how loud I am? There are a lot of different components to it that are very hard to figure out. And there are so many different components in the chain of it. You might play music from your computer, but then you have to use an audio interface for my synthesizer. Then I have to run all of that into a plugin in the browser. Then that might go to a server. There are so many different components in there. You have to learn how to use each component. And then each one of those is going to have its own little idiosyncrasies that you got to figure out how to set up and figure out.
It's a lot. And it'd be nice if there was one whole simplified thing that we built for musicians to be able to perform. And a straightforward way to do it. Then the other side of that is of people who want to do sheet music. If they had a way to actually read music in the headset and perform that way. I'd say the last thing too, is audio sync over distance. If there was a way to perform with people who are co-located in time, that would be a huge solution as well. I feel like some of the platforms have taken a step back from AltspaceVR because that's just the performance component. You still also have to think about the event component. Having the host space set up where you can be on Amplify mode and having the ability to mute your audience, being able to have level setting of your audio. If the music's playing from this, can I lower it for myself? All of these different nuanced things add up to the experience being an enjoyable one. If somebody's not really thinking about all these different components to the experience, is it enjoyable? Especially if you go in and somebody's being loud, or the music's too loud. Something as simple as being able to turn your environment volume down for yourself. I mean, it's a game changer.
I don't know. It's a shame that that kind of thing, that it was that far along, is just kind of gone away. And then there's nothing else that really picks up where that left off and is running with it.
