Online Jamming in realtime! Jamkazam & Jamulus
Just like everyone else, many musicians have a hard time coping with the Corona crisis.
Making music is often something you do with other people. And getting together has been become more difficult than ever.
If you are like me then you probably tried jamming together online in realtime. And this always ended in dissapointment.
For most people it’s pretty much impossible to play online in realtime with your band, or maybe student.
We tried Zoom, Skype, chat/video software of all sorts. And they all have 1 thing in common: too much latency.
Latency in our case simply means how long it takes for the other person to hear you, play along and have the sound return back to you. This “round trip latency” is often just too high to get in sync with each other. Resulting in the session being unplayable within seconds.
Depending on your software, hardware, internet connection and instrument, things might be a bit better but usually never good enough.
So facing this annoying problem I started searching for solutions. As I never really felt the need to play online before i also never searched for any specific software that would make this possible.
I didn’t expect to find much but, lo and behold, some interesting potential solutions presented itself.
In this Youtube video I will discuss 2 pieces of software that seem to work best.
They are called Jamkazam and Jamulus.
So far in my search i haven’t come across anything that seems to work better, when it comes to jamming online in realtime.
Setting Jamkazam and Jamulus up in a way that it works as good as possible can get a bit tricky. So I figured I’d make a video showing step by step how to get the software running as it should and i will discuss the hardware part as well.
The good part is that the software is free. And it works, it really works! With the right setup you will be jamming online in realtime. Be it with your friends or random strangers.
The bad part is that setting it up takes time, patience, the right hardware and a lot of trial and error. And some cussing probably.
But it is worth it!
As I’m writing this the Corona Virus doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon and we’ll be forced to work and play from home for many more months to come.
So far the previous months jamming online through Jamkazam and Jamalus has given me so much joy!
I’ve been playing drums, guitar and bass with many different people. I even sang a bit after a a few too many beers. But let’s not talk about that.
Some days are better than others. Sometimes you’re playing with rookie players, sometimes with professionals. But in general it’s been a blast and people are really nice and friendly.
There is one thing i’d really like to see happening though: more musicians online!
I’ve certainly seen more people getting online to jam over the last few months but i have a feeling most musicians simply don’t know these softwares exist! And i’m sure if they did they would at least try it out.
So i hope to get the word out a bit with this blog post and the accompanying Youtube video! So please feel free to share it in the right channels.
The software is free and i gain nothing from this. I’d just like to see the online jamming become a thing!
I believe Jamkazam recently started a FundMe and reached their goal quite fast. So they will keep improving their software. The Jamulus dev seems to be quite active as well.
So even more people using their software must be motivating to them!
Let’s do this!
I will cover as much as possible in the Youtube video. Or at least what is needed to get you up and running.
If you still have questions feel free to post them here or underneath my Youtube video.
Both Jamulus and Jamkazam also have an active forum where people will be happy to answer any questions you might have.
You can find them here:
https://forum.jamkazam.com/
https://sourceforge.net/p/llcon/discussion/
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