Day: July 18, 2015

I love to play the piano, something I’ve mentioned in these pages before. In the physical world, I’m fortunate enough to have a hybrid piano – but Second Life allows me to indulge my little fantasy of having a full concert grand, and I’ve had one in almost every home I’ve had. It’s fair to say I don’t feel at home in SL without one.

Over the years, I’ve upgraded a couple of times – the most recent being to a marvellous mesh creation by Pandora Popstar (aka Lainy Voom) owner of LISP Bazaar I learned about via a Tweet from Skate Foss, and which prompted this article.

My first SL concert grand was the all-prim Musical Alchemy grand by Persephone Milk (L$999). At the time I first brought it, this was the Rolls-Royce of pianos (and in many respects, it still is). It is beautifully crafted and comes with a host of rezzable extras as well as multiple playing and sitting poses, depending on whether the top is up or down.

What made this piano particularly attractive to me was (and is) the selection of music, which includes a piece composed by Persephone herself, together with the option of rezzing a set of ivory keys and the also the harp and strings, both of which fit the cabinet perfectly. These all enhance the piano beautifully, the only downside being that as the piano has a base LI of 85, rezzing these parts balloons that to 163 LI.  As I gradually downsized my landholdings over the years, this eventually became too big an overhead, driving me into finding a replacement.

In 2011 I purchased the PrimPossible concert grand from Ample Clarity (which has since been replaced by a newer model priced from L$950). A sculpted build, it appeared just as the mesh revolution was about to hit the grid, and offered a very nicely styled concert grand with a good selection of music at just 1 LI.  A further advantage with it lay in the fact that because the design was unconstrained by prim cutting, it could be better scaled for the “average” avatar than could be easily achieved with the prim build, meaning I no longer felt I needed the arms of an orang-utan to reach the full stretch of the keyboard 🙂 .

My only niggle with this piano has always been that as a sculpt, it stresses the rendering system with the attendant wait for it to “pop-out” from the initial spheroid shape. Hence, as the mesh market has steadily expanded, I’ve been seeking a replacement.

As mentioned towards the top of this piece, I finally found a suitable replacement in the form of the new LISP Bazaar concert grand thanks to Skate Foss. Currently only available through the Collabor88 event, Pandora’s piano is, in a word, beautiful. It weighs-in at just 6 LI, with and additional 2 for the padded bench, it is being offered in a choice of two finishes: traditional black lacquer and teak, all for an amazing L$288.

More to the point, it is exquisitely modelled along ornate grand piano lines, has an interesting selection of music and includes all the little details that attract me: adjustment wheels on the bench, top board prop cups, the soft and sustaining pedals offering a nice outward presentation and so on. In particular, Pandora has foregone the textured harp / strings / soundboard found in so many mesh offerings costing far more, in favour of a mesh harp and strings.

To be honest, there are a couple of little niggles around these from a purist point-of-view (I modified my piano to double the number of visible strings, for example, as I’m fussy that way), but these are certainly not enough to negate what is a super piano currently available through Collabor88 at a superb price. As it is, I have copies of the black lacquer sitting on the garden terrace of my “main” home, and in the lounge of my Linden Home (for those rare occasions I feel the need to go hide there).

I’m still partial to my Musical Alchemy piano, simply because it was the first piano I purchased in SL; it has stood the test of time exceptionally well, and is still worth considering if you have the land capacity to see it at its fullest advantage. But that said, if you are looking to replace your existing piano because it is a prim or sculpt build, or simply because you fancy a change, you really cannot go wrong with the new LISP Bazaar concert grand, and I have no hesitation in recommending it.

Thank you, Skate, for sharing your discovery!