julietgreen

You definitely should go to Ethernet. I normally play with somewhere between 40 and 50ms delay without too much trouble. However, we are all working towards being able to play with greater delay, as an exercise, and also to play internationally. The US folk are mastering it well and playing with us in Europe quite regularly.

We could have done with you on this. And yes, I did tell them I couldn't play it and would never be able to play it properly but they insisted!

I think so. I have weekly jazz session that has improved my walking bass a lot, and a weekly funk session that has improved my bassline creation and confidence. Then I've had the opportunity to play the double bass with real musicians without having to take it out of the house. This is all remotely through Jamulus. I suppose I should feel guilty that there is no technical practice in there, just playing - but that does have a learning curve.

Agreed.

I know a drummer who plays in his garage. I always presumed this is what he did.

Do you think it would work with a long ethernet?

It's well worth persisting with. There are a lot of us playing in the WorldJam now and we are by no means a bunch of technical experts.

No but it could be an old £50 harmonium.

Jamulus is better in many ways and it's free and open source. You can pay to run your own 'server' but that's very cheap and not necessary. Recording is very easy using Reaper, which is also free as a full demo but inexpensive too. I wouldn't go back to JamKazam now.

The official stats may well be understating the number of deaths due to Covid. Many people die outside the 28 day cut off time. This is why it is important to look at a range of data before drawing conclusions.

This is not true.

You believe incorrectly. Covid deaths are already more than four times the average Flu deaths in UK.

Thank you for sharing this. It would be better if people would stop trivialising this disease based on their own lack of experience. Another musician friend of mine caught it at the same time as you and was in ICU for three months. He has suffered long-term damage. Before I read your article, I read another account of someone who lost their mother. A lot of people have died and are dying (>3000 a week in the UK, currently), but his account was particularly sobering because he described how his mother suffered in her last week and it was utterly horrific. Hard to imagine a worse torture. My view is that we should, as much as we possibly can, be observing first principles of transmission of respiratory viruses. The first one of these is 'stay away from other people'. When that's impossible, limit the time and make sure that there is a fresh air supply. It doesn't matter if you're ten metres away, if you're in a room for three hours together and there is no new air. Everyone should be wearing face coverings at all times when they are anywhere near other people. Singers and horn players? Rehearsal conditions break all the basic 'rules'. It may seem like a low risk, but when assessing risk, it's not just the likelihood that should be taken into account, but also the severity. For Covid, that's potentially death or possibly worse. So my bands have not rehearsed since March, apart from those of us who are on Jamulus online. I have told my fellow band members that I will not rehearse in person nor play a gig until new infections are below 100 a day.

So for those of you who are not sure about latencies, check out WorldJam on youtube. We are playing live. They delay the stream slightly to sync it better with the zoom visuals, but everything is done through Jamulus. It's free and superior. Opened up a whole new world of performance for me. Like I said, here are a group of us performing together across the world, at the same time, last Saturday. The violinist and the singer are the masters of delay, but it comes after a while. ochi.mp4

My last WorldJam live gig was a version of 'Dark Eyes' with a singer in Russia and a violinist in USA. Myself and the two guitars were in the UK. Live. Admittedly the first two haved learned to deal with latencies of up to 150ms, but for those of us in the UK, they're usually somewhere between 20 - 50.

This. Without a doubt. It's been impressive.

Some people get lower latencies, but they're rare. A lot of people seem to operate without too much effort at around 40ms, so with 30 you're fine and you'll hardly notice it. My most recently jam was with someone in Minnesota and someone in St Petersburg with a few of us in the middle in the UK. That's not common - most people can't deal with those latencies, but the American guy is a master at it and the Russian is used to it now! I'll post the video when we've played our online gig.

You just know Johann Sebastian would appreciate those rock basslines. He invented a lot of them.

Thanks for that lesson. It was really helpful!

I've been playing quite a bit since lockdown. Not with any of my normal live bands, but on Jamulus with a bunch of new people I wouldn't have met otherwise. It's pretty doable. Here's one we did earlier with me making my debut on double bass (apologies to all the db players out there - I will learn it properly, I promise). I've also done eb and sax . That session included the violinist from the states - playing with 150+ latency. You can hear a bit of burbling and we're constantly trying to improve sound quality and latency. But for live rehearsal and working up new stuff and trying all the things you've ever wanted to do, it's great. I'd never get that opportunity with my real life bands. https://youtu.be/tlGfu1dG_2c?t=1992 Remember - this is live. No pre-recording and editing.

Hi Zoltan. I think I might have exchanged a couple of emails with you once and done a few of your free online lessons. I am so inclined - I'll get in touch.

A couple of pubs near me seem to have started live music again. One of them is theoretically 'outdoors' but it's a very enclosed kind of outdoors with brass players only a few feet from each other and everyone else and audience still at close quarters. The other one is indoors in a situation indistiguishable from pre-covid settings but without brass so far, I think. My threshold is still <100 new cases a day. Then I'll go back out relatively happily.

Agreed. You should try to hear the return signal if you can. The brain compensates for latencies after a while. The trick is to hang into the drummer. Even when I play sax, I try to turn up the return to drown out the live sound. I don't use the 'solo' button any more because I've been caught out in a live jam with people entering the room who I'd previously put on solo. It cuts out all the other feeds and everything goes silent. Now you can set new entrants to the room to come in at 0% or something which won't deafen you. Most recently I've played with a violinist in the states. He was using electric violin and managed to totally compensate for 140ms+ latency!

Yep. It's getting better and better all the time with each update. A gift of a piece of software that isn't widely appreciated. I can see how it can become very useful for pre rehearsal rehearsals. Thrash it out on jamulus so that everyone knows the form etc. and then when it's more or less sorted, get together for the full rehearsal. Would save on fuel, time, studio fees etc. (when we eventually get back to in-person rehearsals)

Thanks. That's what I thought. There are some gs in there too.