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How are bands practicing online?


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I see these videos that bands are making. They appear to be playing together simultaneously in different locations.

 

How are they doing that? They"re playing together, harmonies, etc.. no perceivable latency to me. Are they using Zoom? Something else?

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They're each doing their parts individually to a click or backing track and then someone is editing the thing together to sync it all and make it look like it was done together. I wish there was a real way, but latency on the internet makes it impossible. I use zoom every day for work, and as great as it is at what it does, there are plenty of times where people lips are off from their voice. And when I can hear my own voice echoed back through someone's speakers, it can be at least a half second.
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They're each doing their parts individually to a click or backing track and then someone is editing the thing together to sync it all and make it look like it was done together. I wish there was a real way, but latency on the internet makes it impossible. I use zoom every day for work, and as great as it is at what it does, there are plenty of times where people lips are off from their voice. And when I can hear my own voice echoed back through someone's speakers, it can be at least a half second.

 

I see. Makes sense. Too bad. I was hoping to do rehearsals with the band. Thanks! At least I know I'm not missing some cool trick.

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Those pesky laws of physics are only part of the issue, and actually a relatively small part.

 

at the speed of light, the latency when dealing with someone on the other side of the ocean would be noticeable but not unworkable. However, that assumes a direct transmission from one person to the other, like a dedicated undersea telephone line. A telephone call that gets bounced off a Communications Satellite will add roughly 250 ms latency, but for two people on the same continent, the delays will be very small.

 

The real problem here is packet delay. Streaming audio and video needs to be moved across the Internet in manageable packets, and it is essentially impossible to guarantee an uninterrupted stream of data from point A to point B, no matter how close they are in real life. Data has to be collected in buffers so that it can be delivered to the client in an unbroken stream. Some of this buffering can be done on the server side, while some of it is on the client side, i.e. in your computer. when it seems like you"re receiving an uninterrupted stream of video on your device, it"s actually been interrupted many times, and the buffering comes together to make sure that you don"t get any hiccups. You can"t do this in real time with other people, because everyone"s buffering and packet delays will be different.

 

How the 'online real time collaboration' software packages get around this is a pretty nifty cheat, but it"s one that doesn"t work very well for actual jamming. That"s probably something for another post.

Dr. Mike Metlay (PhD in nuclear physics, golly gosh) :D

Musician, Author, Editor, Educator, Impresario, Online Radio Guy, Cut-Rate Polymath, and Kindly Pedant

Editor-in-Chief, Bjooks ~ Author of SYNTH GEMS 1

 

clicky!:  more about me ~ my radio station (and my fam) ~ my local tribe ~ my day job ~ my bookmy music

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You might try the JamKazam again.

The folks behind it bailed out some years ago, but the later condition have raised the interest, so they have recently upgraded the software, and are about to upgrade the server capacity.

I have not tested it with others yet, but was at least able to get it up and running on my Mac and have done some recordings with myself on a test session( that was impossible a few weeks ago).

Now, my problem are that I need to test it with people closer by (due to latency), but in my band we have a few lowtech members that never will be able to get it up and run.

You need a direct ethernet cabling to your router, WiFi will not work, so a Mac or PC are needed.

/Bjørn - old gearjunkie, still with lot of GAS
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They're each doing their parts individually to a click or backing track and then someone is editing the thing together to sync it all and make it look like it was done together. I wish there was a real way, but latency on the internet makes it impossible. I use zoom every day for work, and as great as it is at what it does, there are plenty of times where people lips are off from their voice. And when I can hear my own voice echoed back through someone's speakers, it can be at least a half second.

 

This is exactly right.

 

One of our electives where I teach is a Music Technology class. We use Garage Band extensively, because our students are given MacBook Air computers and Garage Band is free on those computers. Using Apple TV, I project my GB screen up to a large screen. I MIDI my Clavinova into the my computer to input tracks and demo instruments for the students. However, I have to keep my sound output coming from the headphone jack on my laptop and directly patched into the classroom sound system.

Otherwise, the signal has to go from my computer, through wi-fi up to the server room, back down to the AppleTV, and then down to the sound system.

The lag, just within the building, can be as much as a half-second. IMPOSSIBLE to play. And this is just within a school building with a very fast network. Way faster than most people's home routers and uplink.

Here's a video that recently appeared on YouTube with some folks trying to have a band rehearsal online:

Online Band Rehearsal Fail

Muzikteechur is Lonnie, in Kittery, Maine.

 

HS music teacher: Concert Band, Marching Band, Jazz Band, Chorus, Music Theory, AP Music Theory, History of Rock, Musical Theatre, Piano, Guitar, Drama.

 

 

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but latency on the internet makes it impossible.

 

The fundamental architectures of the Internet's underlying protocols are designed to be NON-real-time -- originally intended to survive a nuclear event where large portions of the communication infrastructure might suddenly disappear, and to re-route around the outage. As long as the data arrives at the destination *eventually*, that's a successful transmission. A lot of things just can't work that way. I remember struggling trying to get a fax machine to work over a VoIP connection until I realized, duh -- the Internet is asynchronous, and a fax machine requires a synchronous, real-time data connection. Music, especially multi-track music, is inherently synchronous. Sometimes you can *simulate* synchronicity by applying extreme transmission speed -- but only if you control the whole pipeline.

 

My music ministry at church wants to do one of those "Brady Bunch"-style music videos - "It's easy, we'll just do it on Zoom!" I invited them to give it a try -- it was an hilarious disaster; and now they all understand what latency means :) We're still doing it, but exactly as described above: by creating a "reference" track that everyone records themselves singing to, and then editing and synchronizing those together. It's exactly like old-school audio multi-tracking -- only now with audio *and* video.

Legend '70s Compact, Jupiter-Xm, Studiologic Numa X 73

 

 

 

 

 

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