Entertainer Archive

lol no you can't! I dare you to try and play a horn and talk at the same time. I'm not refering to game mechanics, but reality.

Getting back on topic here........I'm learning all the musician moves and commands and am also needing to learn about the various bandleader commands. Perhaps some of you would be kind enough to list the most commonly used /commands for bands and perhaps some suggestions for some good band macros to use in a performance.

Well I'm not much of a musician, but some of the most useful commands for music are:

/stopband (or /stop -- stops everyone in the band)

/changemusic songname -- allows you to change which song you're playing without stopping -- not sure if this works for the entire band or just for individuals.

/stopmusic -- stops just you, not the entire band.

Likewise for dancers:

/changedance dancename -- allows you to change dances without stopping. Only works for individuals.

Another handy tip for dancers:

An easy way to change which direction you're facing is to /smileat someone -- it will automatically readjust you to face your target.

Awesome thread! Good advice. The cool thing is that if you're really into playing a Musician or Dancer, some of this stuff occurs to you as you seek better ways to play. Everything mentioned in the first few posts is stuff I do.

Tip Distribution

I colorized /tip messages also, so that when I get random tips from viewers, I know it's time to decide who to send tips to. This is a discussion in the Musician forum right now, in a thread I started to discuss implementing /grouptip commands (/tipinclude, /tipexclude, /tiplist, etc.). Here's my own way of handling tip distribution. Whatever I feel about it, both active and passive band members are a reality. So I decide at the moment of the /tip who gets a part of the split. It's only really up to the tip receiver, since nobody's told automatically who gets what.

Flourishing

The system is good for creating moods. Try creating interesting long strings of flourishes! You're only bound by your Action pool.

Flourishes queue up. I don't know how many can be queued. I've hit twenty sequential FKeys before the first is done and all were played. This is good when doing Manual Band Flourishes.

You can do Manual Band Flourishes to spice things up in a group. Work out a flourish sequence, or use one of the ones you created. Tell the band members the order in which to flourish. Then initiate a 3-2-1 countdown. At one, have everyone queue up the flourishes in that order. They could even pre-program macros for it. This way, everyone gets XP and it sounds as good as you can get with /bandflourish. It takes alot of trial and error, but it's fun.

Action Pool Management

A Novice Medic can use Stimpack As and Bs. I used to make them but now just buy them from people who dedicate themselves to medicine as I am to music.

You also get the /tenddamage command. Using it on yourself gives you back Action points, while penalizing you with Focus and Willpower Wounds. Well, if you're in a group, these go away almost faster than they can be gained

Grouping

If you go anywhere and find another entertainer there, immediately discuss grouping At first you might be timid about it, thinking your skills not good enough. However, the amount of XP a band gets increases with the number of members and does not appear to be affected by the song. Someone playing Starwars1 on a Nalargon is going to get the same per-flourish XP as they would on Waltz or higher. It's just that they may have grown long tired of Starwars1 But everyone I've met has been very cool about it.

You can also have more than one band in a cantina. Just don't step on eachother's toes. Two bands should go to either side of the room. The only real reason to do this would be for the rare occasion a band is full or a band really really doesn't want to play anything lower than Ballad. Both are understandable.

Travel

While the XP may not be all that hot, going to lesser populated areas doesn't mean you won't get customers. I've lived in Coronet for a week, but before that I was in Kor Vella. At most I had a duet where 90% of the time I was solo. But plenty of people still need BF and Mind heals, and may thank you greatly for it.

Income

With the new Gig Mission Terminals coming up, we'll have another way to generate money on our own, in addition to the existing NPC Gig Missions and delivery missions. Until then, the latter two are good.

Encouragement

It's very easy to get discouraged or to meet people that get so. Not a two hour block goes by where I don't hear someone say some variant of "I get x XP per Flourish and I need x-tens-of-thousands?!". I always say the key isn't to be maximum efficient in your gains. You can be, but if you really want to enjoy the fruits of your labour, you really want to play around with it creatively. Anyone can macro AFK to Master Musician, probably within two weeks.

Only you can make that title mean something more than a tag over your head. Some people won't enjoy it. Well, I don't enjoy creature handling

Do dancers have a /changetroupe <dancename> command or something?

That would be really useful..at least for me

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bugbread wrote:
Dare me to? I do it all the time. Come to the Theed Cantina on Naboo and watch me go. And I don't use abbreviations (u, ur) either. Though the occassional spelling mistake does come in.

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Bug, as I said in my other post, I was halfway kidding and NOT refering to game mechanics but to reality. You cannot talk and play a horn at the same time. It's a role playing aspect and certainly not confusion on my part. Sorry for the misunderstanding my attempt at humor caused.

If you try and talk or sing at the same time as playing a horn IRL you get a terrible multi-phonic. However, if you know what notes you are singing and playing you can get some nice chords going on. I heard Bill Watris do this on Trombone a number of years ago and right after him in the concert, the saxophone soloist got up and imitated it (he didn't want to be shown up I guess, but it was Bill Watris after all).

It's not too difficult to make the sound, what's hard is getting it to sound good; and volume is an issue to.

Just and FYI there, I'm full of useless, off topic info that only slightly ties in to the discussion.

Cary on.

More tips!!!!

Song management - Try to keep things moving. Don't play SW1 all night long. I usually set an alarm to go off every 20 minutes or so. At that point, I announce that we're changing songs. Always ok this with the members of the band, as most will not be able to play every song. This keeps things from getting monotonous, changes things up a bit (hey, even the NPC musicians change between their two songs), and makes the "wear-and-tear" value of the songs last a little longer.

Band Placement - Try to see if you can manuveur your band into various placements (this is artistic only, but fun). I personally like placing the musicians in a circle facing inwards. Makes for a very good "jam session" feel. Bandflourishes also look 110% better when everyone is in some kind of formation.

Location - There are other places besides cantinas where you can heal BF (Hotels and Theaters, I believe (please correct me if I'm wrong)) On long days, take a trip to one of these places and put a show on there. Make sure you announce to your customers that you're moving, but it's amazing how playing in the theater can add a whole new feeling to playing. (and it's a lot better feeling than trying to squeeze yourself in between a table and the nearest dancer....well, nothing wrong being squeezed next to a dancer....but I digress)

Training- Most band leaders are usually the highest level musicians of the group, and as such, they get asked for training a lot. Try to get the younger players to train the bottom skills (especially if you're the only bandfill in the group) to keep the sound going and yet get everyone trained. Another alternative, if you do the switch song idea above, train people at the break between songs, since you will continue gaining xp after you "ding"

I'll give out some more as I learn them.