The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    Trying to find what people are using for online rehearsals these days (we've tried FaceTime, Skype and Zoom but these are conversation based programs (i.e. one person speaking, other listening), so playing at the same time doesn't really work. This post from Sweetwater lists NINJAM, Jamulus, eJamming, and JamKazam, but it looks like none of these platforms are currently supported or working anymore.
    sweetwater.com/insync/online-band-practices-possible/

    Many thanks in advance!
    -Bob
    Last edited by bobafifi; 03-22-2020 at 07:23 PM.

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  3. #2

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    I tried ejamming maybe 8 years ago with one other person/location about 30 miles away. The closer the location the better, 30 miles is a pretty optimal distance but there was too much latency, it was horrible unusable which is probably why those platforms no longer exist.. It seems the more locations you have dialing in the worse it would be.

    I would suggest multitrack recording and trading tracks over the internet, gmail works great for that. That doing covers and songwriting is what I do. I do that with someone in North Carolina and I'm in California.

  4. #3
    Thanks Frank! I think the Sweetwater article threw me since it's from 2019, yet most of these platforms are 10-15 years old. In the age of COVID-19, being able to rehearse online would be great, but from what I'm seeing, it appears to be more vaporware than reality. Thanks again!

  5. #4

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    I've been hoping for a solution as well. Keep waiting for someone to chime in with the magical answer!

  6. #5

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    There were some products. None worked. Not clear that any of them have been updated in some time.

    Latency is the main problem. Sound quality in Gotomeeting is not good enough.

  7. #6

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    Always gonna be hardware and software peddlers making claims that they found a way, but latency will always be an issue until some totally new technology develops. I'm positive the Dept of Defense is working on the solution....

  8. #7

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    If (and only if) your bandmate lives in your neighbourhood you could try either to throw an ethernet cable or doing some fancy amplified WLAN stuff. I still don't know what hard- and software to use in such a close to perfect situation.

    For greater distances the IPSs should offer a privileged "zero-latency" service for some extra money...

  9. #8

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    Ultimately you do run up against the speed of light. A delay of a few milliseconds is enough to make a difference in terms of time feel.

  10. #9

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    Basically what we are dealing with is time travel. Still on the drawing board, or in comic books.


  11. #10

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    Just wondering, could you both communicate over cell phones and listen that way record high quality at your houses and then merge the two tracks afterwards?

    I don't know what kind of latency cell phones have.

  12. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by sully75
    Just wondering, could you both communicate over cell phones and listen that way record high quality at your houses and then merge the two tracks afterwards?

    I don't know what kind of latency cell phones have.
    I'm not sure I follow sully75, sorry. Merging recorded tracks afterwards isn't really the goal here (that's already possible - musicians send tracks back and forth via email, Dropbox etc. and create new recordings all the time. It's being able to create a virtual recording studio or rehearsal room that musicians can play in real-time). At this point I'm resigned to it being more fantasy than reality. But who knows - it wasn't that long ago that platforms like Skype were thought to be impossible. Thanks!

  13. #12

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    Quote Originally Posted by bobafifi
    I'm not sure I follow sully75, sorry. Merging recorded tracks afterwards isn't really the goal here (that's already possible - musicians send tracks back and forth via email, Dropbox etc. and create new recordings all the time. It's being able to create a virtual recording studio or rehearsal room that musicians can play in real-time). At this point I'm resigned to it being more fantasy than reality. But who knows - it wasn't that long ago that platforms like Skype were thought to be impossible. Thanks!
    I didn't explain myself well. What I meant was that you'd have your recording set up in your house, but you'd call your partner on the phone and then jam using the phone. Each one of you would record simultaneously and then you could take the two recorded tracks and merge them together on the computer. Make sense? I assume phones are very low latency but I don't really know.

  14. #13

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    Here's a group in isolation in Spain jamming via iPhone with a vocalist in South America.


  15. #14

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    Quote Originally Posted by pcjazz
    Here's a group in isolation in Spain jamming via iPhone with a vocalist in South America.

    If the girl is really away, the time is aligned here only on one side of the phone. The guys adjust their play to the singing girl.

    The idea to play via Internet is absorbing also my mind these days.
    Tried jamkazam with no success.

    It seems to me that the Ninjam concept offers real possibility to play music over the Internet, however, the experience is a bit strange and different from jamming in one place.



    In fact the players can be a full phrase away but still play together. These times it seems to be much better than not to play at all.

  16. #15

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    Quote Originally Posted by sully75
    I didn't explain myself well. What I meant was that you'd have your recording set up in your house, but you'd call your partner on the phone and then jam using the phone. Each one of you would record simultaneously and then you could take the two recorded tracks and merge them together on the computer. Make sense? I assume phones are very low latency but I don't really know.
    You can easily test this by calling someone who's in the same room as you. You'll find that there is a big delay.

  17. #16

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    Watching this thread...

    BNL seems to have found a way!


  18. #17

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    I guess the band is led by the guitarist. Three other musicians listen to the leader and record their performances separately. Some postprocessing and manual adjustments were needed at the end and ... her it is!

  19. #18

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    Ninjam is integrated into Reaper and seems to work well.

  20. #19

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    Looks promising...thank you!
    jammr, jamulus and jamkazam were all no go due to latency....

  21. #20

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    I tried sofasession yesterday. I enjoyed it although there are a few weird signal stops or kind of LP filterings sometimes. It should depend on everyones connection of course. The plarform is userfriendly and the latency seems ok for low to moderate tempos but I am not sure about its stability. Still I definitely give it another try. In these times of lockdown it's better than nothing.

    Envoyé de mon SM-G930F en utilisant Tapatalk

  22. #21

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    If they were able to do that live, with video, it would be a paradigm shift – unless they were all plugged into the same router, living next door to each other. They may have done it the same way as all the other videos online of musicians playing together from quarantine – one person sends out the master video, and everyone else records a video of themselves playing to that track – hence the headphones. By the way, I wish they had brought up the drummer in the mix...

    Unfortunately, the internet (and the speed of light) will introduce too much latency to make the project much fun. The video adds to the amount of processing that must take place, and sucks up more bandwidth.

    As matcarsa posts, for slow tempi with fewer notes, the latency can be bearable. But the other problem is that as soon as there are more than two connections, every video "chat" app with which I'm familiar will cut off some of the simultaneous audio, and it's random – you can't be sure which participant can be heard at any time. I have had a "rehearsal" where all of us but one mute our audio, and that one is the "master" with which we all play along, without being able to hear anyone but the "master."

    Add to that, the apps that promise simultaneous audio require static IP addresses, fiddling with the router settings, and a wired (not wireless – smart phones are out) connection to the internet.

  23. #22

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    Yes, online band practice is totally possible and musicians are doing it every day.

    Try koord.live as an easy way to create private sessions and play remotely using Jamulus or Koord Realtime open source software.

    As long as you have a decent internet connection and are within 500 Km from an available region (data center) you should be able to have a solid experience.

    If you are very far from each other or from a data centre you can try Ninjam/JamTaba and play in sync but in different intervals in time. Not very intuitive at first but it's a nice workaround if you want to Jam with someone on the other side of the world.

    I also heard good things about Sonobus (never tried it). It uses a P2P system instead of a cloud service.