online band rehearsals

[cjazjef]

So I figured this is the best place to ask this question..I have a 2 year old and my time to go to band practice has become limited to say the least but I have been reading some stuff and the band is down for doing online jamming when we cant get together but I have no experience or clue where to start. Does anyone have any recommendations, experiences, etc they couldd share so I could get the ball rolling? I use the skype thing for lessons but this needs to be more of a real time process and video is not a necessity.

[ejmy]

It will take time before you will be able to play in real time over the net without any latency. Your children will be all grown up LOL
JMO

[longfinger]

I was just thinking about this....

The digital technology has been around for maybe a decade already... but it was very expensive back then. I remember reading about universities testing out distance rehearsals with other universities.

Now, it can be done without the "experimental" aspect, but it seems to be still expensive. For example, on Sunday's Oscar ceromonies, the orchestra was in another building (Capitol Tower) and playing live for people in the ceremony (Dolby) theatre. With enough money, it can be done right now.


What we'd need is software that can upload and download at the same time. (Stuff like free Skype only does it one way at a time, which is fine for conversations of people taking turns speaking, but is no good for rehearsals.) And it would have to have a very low latency. I'd be interested in knowing if the paid for communication software can enable this. Even if it cost some money, it could save some in transportation, and rental fees, and offer some good convenience, enabling short 30 minute rehearsals at night with people across town. (As opposed to no rehearsal)

The other thing, old technology, that works without latency is the good old telephone. Put it on speaker phone, and we're set.

[Phantasm]

Telephones do in fact have latency...

The reason that this won't be a reality anytime soon is latency, and that's due to the length of the connection between the two parties.

[Toolmybass]

Originally Posted by longfinger

Sunday's Oscar ceromonies, the orchestra was in another building (Capitol Tower) and playing live for people in the ceremony (Dolby) theatre.

Are these buildings right beside each other?...if not how was the signal delivered to the Dolby Theater?...

If signal was sent via the web there would still be latency here...If the music producers of the show were "anal " about the latency the video feed of the orchestra (if any) would be adjusted to the audio playing in the Dolby

This was one of our first year experiments/tests done in live audio engineering ...we were paired up with people in the media/ video course!...was fun. The whole text part was based on just latency

TMB

[testing1two]

This is already being done in professional studio environments but it's a long ways from being financially feasible for the average musician.

http://www.ednet.net/audio/index.html

[longfinger]

According to google maps, the Capital Records Tower is less than a mile away from the Dolby Theatre (Formerly Kodak Theatre).

I'm sure no expenses were spared, and the organizers kept throwing money at the problems until solutions were found and implemented.

[Toolmybass]

Originally Posted by longfinger

According to google maps, the Capital Records Tower is less than a mile away from the Dolby Theatre (Formerly Kodak Theatre).

I'm sure no expenses were spared, and the organizers kept throwing money at the problems until solutions were found and implemented.

They wouldnt have to spend really anything to delay the orchestra vid a 1/3 of a second or vise-versa....nobody in audience would ever know. Its a very easy fix

[Phantasm]

If it's just a singer on top of the orchestra, latency is not a factor.

The orchestra can easily be broadcast to the Grammys in another building. Then the singer listens to this playback and sings along, and this is mixed to the audience. The orchestra never hears the singer, they're just playing along to the conductor. There is no interaction required and that's why it works.

Makes sense?

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by testing1two

This is already being done in professional studio environments but it's a long ways from being financially feasible for the average musician.

http://www.ednet.net/audio/index.html

In this case, thinking of it from a Network Engineer's perspective, this is my guess.

Studio A has the bed track for the commercial jingle singer to work with. It plays the track to Studio B in another city, and the singer is able to monitor the playback and do a take.

The latency is calculated and the audio is sent back to studio A. If needed the alignment is adjusted.

The reason that this works is that the singer is listening to the bed track, but the bed track is prerecorded. The "band" is not listening for the singer to determine things like tempo, feel, meter, etc.

I've been doing this for a while now... if the track is ready, I can just Video Conference with the producer/songwriter and I play along to the bed track on my PC. This broadcasts everything to them in time and when I'm done with the take, they can offer commentary. But we don't play along together live due to latency.

[Big Brother]

The limits are pretty well explored and Cisco/Polycomm and others have spent millions on this problem already but you can't bend the laws of physics. This is simple teleconferencing technology and it will always be problematic for live rehearsal because the latency for syncing 3 or more participants will never be faster than the slowest connection among them. Plus encoding/decoding time.

Unless you live close enough to run your own fiber on a private network, you will have to get used to a half second delay between playing a note and hearing it, not to mention playing ahead of the track you hear, and that will drive everyone crazy inside of 4 minutes. Even with your own network there would likely be a noticeable lag and that would be hard to get used to.

If this lag were visual instead of audible you'd get dizzy.

[silky smoove]

It's possible to do studio sessions over the internet in real time. That said, that's doing one track played against recorded backing and a calculated adjustment for latency on both ends. It works shockingly well, and is also fairly expensive. Not the same as trying to get multiple live musicians all synced up, but it's at least an indication that the technology is "getting there."