Remote Band Practicing

[ragetoca]

I play with a band where the band members live in Different stantes (NJ, CA and GA) - when we play at events we really don't have time to do full rehearsals.
Does anyone know of a software / services / equipment that allows remote/online practicing? something over 500 miles with small latency!

Thanks

Joe

 

[LowWay]

To my knowledge that doesn’t really exist. I used to have a hardware device that worked but was flaky at 250 miles.

This device claims to do it:

 

[ragetoca]

To my knowledge that doesn’t really exist. I used to have a hardware device that worked but was flaky at 250 miles.

This device claims to do it:

I have seen some that claim 500 miles max

 

[RedGrange]

The latency will be noticeable. It will be more than 10ms. Adam Neely did a video on this

 

[KohanMike]

Agreed, the state of the internet as it is, prevents real time collaboration. BUT, you might want to explore trying an audio only connection, maybe that will have less latency.

 

[SteveCS]

I play with a band where the band members live in Different stantes (NJ, CA and GA) - when we play at events we really don't have time to do full rehearsals.
Does anyone know of a software / services / equipment that allows remote/online practicing? something over 500 miles with small latency!

Thanks

Joe

It depends on how much latency you can cope with. We pay a few £ per month to host a private server at an AWS data centre in London which, combined with good high-speed (>80mps) internet at home, delivers 10ms ping and sub 30ms overall delay with Jamulus, which is more than workable. Not quite sure how well it could be made to work coast to coast. Success is improved by always using wired connections to the routers and stopping as many other streaming services and connected devices as possible.

 

[ragetoca]

It depends on how much latency you can cope with. We pay a few £ per month to host a private server at an AWS data centre in London which, combined with good high-speed (>80mps) internet at home, delivers 10ms ping and sub 30ms overall delay with Jamulus, which is more than workable. Not quite sure how well it could be made to work coast to coast. Success is improved by always using wired connections to the routers and stopping as many other streaming services and connected devices as possible.
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I see. LA to New Jersey is like 3000 miles so it is a probably a thing of physics vs internet speed

 

[SteveCS]

I see. LA to New Jersey is like 3000 miles so it is a probably a thing of physics vs internet speed

Indeed. I've tried a few times with folks on the east coast (Boston, Philadelphia) and it was on the cusp of impossible once the delay got over 60ms. I think it depends on the type of music, how well you all know it and what you are trying to achieve from the sessions. You could always install a Jamulus client at home and do a bit of incognito server-surfing, just to get a feel of what is possible and where your realistic boundaries of acceptability might be.

 

[Brandon Shea]

I've heard good things about JackTrip, but haven't tried it myself yet. Might be worth trying whatever they offer for free to see if it meets your needs. I agree with the others that latency is going to be a challenge given the geographic distance between band members. Make sure you're using ethernet and not wifi, too!

 

[Jeff Hughes]

I have heard of people doing this where instead of everyone hearing each person's audio signal, each player just heard the guide audio from the BL or keyboard/rhythm guitar and played along in their own home setting.

So you can't hear each other, but you can at least work out the sections where trainwrecks might occur. So if everyone is playing along to the same guide, there is no latency as long as you aren't trying to monitor each other. Hope this helps.

This approach can be done with zoom, teams, or google meetings.

 

[newfuture]

I used to do tech support for a company that did this sort of thing in real time on dedicated direct dialed digital phone lines (low bandwidth, but very low latency, pre internet) and it was possible-ish with very fast compression algorithms (the enhanced apt-X that is in the Bluetooth spec came in at 1.4 ms). For small distances, it was possible, as distance increased so did latency. Most of what we did was program in one direction and talk back in the other so it didn't matter much. When timing was mission critical, we used time code on one channel and program on the other.

Once we're talking about transporting over the internet, latency becomes too high to effectively jam in a tight fashion.

I have had better luck with things like reaper's ninjam that embraced the delay rather than tried to fight it.

 

[SteveCS]

Let's not get too hung up on a few ms latency. 30ms is the equivalent to just over 10 metres physical separatiion which is about the same as the distance between basses and the back row of 1st violins in a symphony orchestra. On a big stage the percussion might well be further away. The important thing is to all have confidence in your own sense of time and tempo so that the latency doesn't drag you back. Drummers especially have to keep on keeping on.

 

[Kevorargh]

I tried an app called JamKazam which allowed this sort of thing as well as joining random people to jam. It worked well with other people over in Europe or other parts of the US, but not with my band -your set up is super important. JamKazam stated that wireless won't work for remote practicing - you have to have an ethernet cable set up to have any chance of working with the latency, from what I can remember.

Good luck!

 

[guitarflinger]

We use JamKazam for rehearsals between Cheyenne and Chicago (1000 miles). On a good night, 30-35 ms latency which is detectable but not overwhelming. The secret is to keep on tempo even if the feed sounds slow. Initially, I tried to slow down to match the distant guitar player. That doesn't work, it just slows everyone down. Being in the room with the drummer is the easiest way to ignore latency. However, when it gets to 50 msec, rehearsal is pretty much worthless.

 

[Altitude]

The collaboration tools are ready for this, but as others have said we still have too much latency for it to be fully effective.

I for one am here for this tech. I think it will be a life saver for the dying world of live music. People are too busy, or too impatient, to invest the time necessary to travel to rehearsals with regularity. I’m in one band right now now that is very good but we aren’t playing because all the players are scattered across a very large metro area and it’s hard to get together.

If I could walk into my home office at 6:30, plug in, and get 90 minutes of decent rehearsal time with the group and not have to pack in and out nor drive 45 minutes each way, I would be doing it a lot more.

No band can play well live if they have not been in a room together rehearsing for some period of time - I’d still prescribe in-person rehearsals for new bands learning a fresh book and occasionally thereafter. For normal maintenance and care/feeding of an existing situation this would be fantastic.

 

[funkinbottom]

I tried Jamkazam early on (during covid) and it was hit and miss. More miss than hit though and stopped using it. I have friends that rehears remotely, they say latency issues have been improved.
One friend of mine is using Farplay and says it's considerably better than JK. No first hand experience with Farplay. Been thinking of giving it a try, but not really a necessity, as these days mainly recording, so sending tracks to friends.

 

[oldcatfish]

Not exactly what you’re looking for, but I used to play (I was a sub) with a mega-church that had a phenomenal music director. He was a multi-instrumentalist and his wife was one of the lead singers.

He would send the original recording of the song, modified into the correct key along with the music chart. He also would include a recording that had YOUR instrument part missing. Basically, a backing track….any modifications to the song would be on that. Sometimes the backing track would actually be the original with an instrument stripped using some sort of software (Ableton Live?), but other times the backing track would be him playing all of the other instrumental parts, with his wife singing. It was enough to build confidence and skill so that actual rehearsals were very smooth. Rarely did any issues come up, unless there was a last minute change of one of the musicians.

If you all could get together once and record all of your instruments on separate tracks, and make samples with each instrument missing, it would give you at least some way of practicing remotely.

 

[ragetoca]

I tried Jamkazam early on (during covid) and it was hit and miss. More miss than hit though and stopped using it. I have friends that rehears remotely, they say latency issues have been improved.
One friend of mine is using Farplay and says it's considerably better than JK. No first hand experience with Farplay. Been thinking of giving it a try, but not really a necessity, as these days mainly recording, so sending tracks to friends.

Farplay looks like a great option! thanks for the suggestion

 

[roccobass]

I tried Jamkazam early on (during covid) and it was hit and miss. More miss than hit though and stopped using it. I have friends that rehears remotely, they say latency issues have been improved.
One friend of mine is using Farplay and says it's considerably better than JK. No first hand experience with Farplay. Been thinking of giving it a try, but not really a necessity, as these days mainly recording, so sending tracks to friends.

Either Farplay and JK are hit and miss. Distance being the main killer. Factors also that make or break a session are age of your computer, your cable server and making sure you’re on ethernet. Drummers get the worst of it always. I still use JK was but only with close players.

 

[LowWay]

Let's not get too hung up on a few ms latency. 30ms is the equivalent to just over 10 metres physical separatiion which is about the same as the distance between basses and the back row of 1st violins in a symphony orchestra. On a big stage the percussion might well be further away. The important thing is to all have confidence in your own sense of time and tempo so that the latency doesn't drag you back. Drummers especially have to keep on keeping on.

Orchestras have a conductor to help overcome this.