Jamming with people online

[dllive]

Hi,
Ive been thinking: Is there an aplication or website that lets you jam with others online? Our band members live so far away from each other! I tried playing with the guitarist on Skype the other day, but he couldnt really hear what I was playing and vice versa.

[Jazz Ad]

Ninjam

Once you get used to the way it works, it is fine.
Be ready to meet awful musicians though.

[heavyfunkmachin]

I've used ninjam in the past and I had a couple great sessions... and regarding awfull musicians you can mute the "tracks" you dislike (awfull musicians, a second bass...)

Give it a go!

[niels125]

Is Ninjam a free service?

And is there a active community behind it?

[AndreBas]

Don't you ever feel the latency when jamming over the internet? My connection has a ping of 40ms, other users have pings over 100ms, I find that quite disturbing and impossible to lock in to the drummer's groove.

Ninjam write on their homepage:

Since the inherent latency of the Internet prevents true realtime synchronization of the jam2, and playing with latency is weird (and often uncomfortable), NINJAM provides a solution by making latency (and the weirdness) much longer.

Latency in NINJAM is measured in measures, and that's what makes it interesting.

The NINJAM client records and streams synchronized intervals of music between participants. Just as the interval finishes recording, it begins playing on everyone else's client. So when you play through an interval, you're playing along with the previous interval of everybody else, and they're playing along with your previous interval. If this sounds pretty bizarre, it sort of is, until you get used to it, then it becomes pretty natural.

I haven't tried it out, but it sounds like it's okay to use for songwriting, trying out chords and melodies, but for pro playing?

[Jazz Ad]

Pro players rarely need or wish to jam online with strangers.

[Hawkbone]

There's some work being done here Verdione

The lag would be the biggest problem that I would envision. Not sure how they will eliminate the inherent lag in the web.

[Jazz Ad]

It's explained in a previous post how Ninjam deals with lag. Everybody plays a bar in front of the music.

[Hawkbone]

Originally Posted by Jazz Ad

Pro players rarely need or wish to jam online with strangers.

Big market though for pros charging inexperienced musicians to sit in on their jams.

[makkE]

wikiloops.com | Free Backing Tracks | Online Jamsession

It's not live jamming, everyone uploads his new takes mixed down in a stereo file.
Great source if you just want to play along too. Any levels welcome.

[niels125]

Thanks for the link to wikiloops!

hadn't heard of it before, but a concept like that deserves to become huge

[zazz]

Given time ....the idea of a real time jamming environment without apparent lag is going to happen...and I guess the quality could eventually be pro.

[Tupac]

That ninjam thing sounds ridiculously cool. But it sounds inherently flawed. Input lag + Internet lag = ultra latency?

[zazz]

I'm more interested in the collaboration sites like kompoz.com..... More methodical .....