Rehearsing via Skype!

[Roger2611]

My old band have decided to do a couple gigs in December to celebrate a friends 50th birthday and 30 years since we last played together, so we have agreed a set and some rehearsal dates in June and July, the biggest issue we have is that the rhythm guitarist / mandolin player now lives in France, it has been decided that he will join us via Skype for rehearsals with the laptop being connected to the mixing desk so he can join in at an audible volume.......it seems to have been decided that this will work perfectly despite the fact that no one has actually tried to ensure it is going to work....so my learned friends what issues can I expect to have to try and resolve!

[mep]

I have used Skype for business conference calls and there can be a bit of time delay going on with the audio. Give it a go and see what happens for you. Good luck. Hopefully technology can help you out

[Ziphoblat]

You'll never get an acceptable/musical latency here. Even local latency can be frustrating when streaming audio (especially via USB if that's the plan), combine this with the latency from streaming it over the internet, and it's just not going to happen. I don't think that the technology is there yet (on a domestic level).

[hubrad]

The word 'latency' does rather spring to mind.

[Ashweb]

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the inherent latency in Skype will not allow simultaneous playing from a remote source. As a simple experiment, set a metronome going at your end and ask your friend to play along - even if it's just playing a note to each beep; he'll be fully in time his end, but at your end he'll be way out.

There may be other systems that can be used but I have no experience with them, but Skype is not suitable I'm afraid.

[Dood]

There are indeed products out there that allow for playing together across the internet and I've heard of people using them with what appears to be success. I've not tried myself, so can't answer, though I recall one product being called 'Ohm', though I had a quick look online and without digging in to the details, it looked like a DAW that allows people across the world to record with each other at the same time. Maybe not quite what you are looking for, but I don't know - maybe it can do other stuff too!

[Dood]

Just found this one: http://www.ejamming.com/learn-more/ and another called Jammr. I'd be interested to hear of anyone using these or similar and if it really does work. ejamming features Phil Collen from Def Leppard in a live video and he seems to be doing ok jamming with two musicians in totally different locations!

[ambient]

I use Skype for teaching. It's fine for that, but there is a slight delay.

[bazzbass]

Lag

otherwise we'd all be jammin on the net, duh

[lowdown]

Steinberg VST Connect Pro. (One of you has to use Cubase though).
https://www.steinberg.net/en/products/vst/vst_connect/vst_connect_pro.html

[joeystrange]

I know this can be done but unfortunately I can't tell you how.

All I know is I have a friend in New York who played drums in a band from Norway for a while and he told me they rehearsed via Skype without issue.

Maybe internet speeds are faster in NYC and Norway than they are here?

[miles'tone]

At the moment I'm suffering drummer latency and we're in the same room.

[SH73]

I can't see this working.I often use Skype to keep touch with family and the connection fails, the picture freezes, the sound breaks. Hating it.

[SpondonBassed]

It's going to be laggy. Not sure what the best work-around is for that but one idea would be to get an audio only connection so that there is less data to be encoded and decoded in real time.

[stingrayPete1977]

If it was the drummer I suppose it would be similar to playing to a click, drummer doesn't have any live fold back and plays to his/her click or along with the backing track then the group play along with the drums being streamed, as long as the drummer and track had a count in it wouldn't matter as long as you are streaming it one way if you like?

[Stylon Pilson]

You need a communication method that is optimised to minimise latency. You want to be keeping the delay below about 10ms, and considering it takes 4 or 5ms for the signal to travel to France and back (as constrained by the laws of physics) that doesn't leave much time for encoding/decoding.

[url=http://llcon.sourceforge.net/]Jamulus[/url] claims to be created with this in mind.

S.P.

[Ghost_Bass]

Have the guitarrist mute his speakers and play alone with a metronome, the rest of the band will be able to keep up with him and get a useable rehearsall, then you can reverse the principle and have the band play the song for him to play along at home. Don't think you'll ever be able to play together with the latency.

[Roger2611]

Thanks guys, I had assumed that latency was likely to be the biggest issue, interestingly a number of the links above look to be to quite old software requiring systems like Windows 98 to work so hopefully there is newer faster technology available.

[Gobbo]

Maybe it will work for him to play along, as long as you can't here him.
The band "Part Chimp" played a session for Marc Riley on Radio 6 Music last night with their keyboard player playing from an office in New York via skype.
Sounded fine, live on the radio, but the timing wasn't that critical. Should be ok for a practice I would have thought.

[Jazzjames]

Just record your tunes and send them to him.

[SpondonBassed]

[quote name='Roger2611' timestamp='1495128142' post='3301531']
Thanks guys, I had assumed that latency was likely to be the biggest issue, interestingly a number of the links above look to be to quite old software requiring systems like Windows 98 to work so hopefully there is newer faster technology available.
[/quote]

Digital technology inevitably suffers from lag simply because of the analogue-digital-analogue process. It can only get so fast before physical limitations stop further refinement. It was said above that <10ms lag is acceptable. If that is the consensus of those who regularly use Internet connections for rehearsal then there already is sufficiently fast tech available. It is merely a question of identifying it then being in a position to afford it.

[Huge Hands]

I just thought I'd say, that as there are a lot of people saying "there [i]will [/i]be lag" - I have experience of actually doing this, and can confirm there definitely is lag, as my band tried it with our singer stuck in Ireland.

I knew it would be the case, but the band insisted on doing it anyway, and I was proved right.

She was way out, and it was pretty much unuseable. We did have a good chat with her for about 20 mins, once we'd given up on rehearsing though.....

Edited May 19, 2017 by Huge Hands

[bazzbass]

why do some people refuse to believe common sense and basic physics?

[EBS_freak]

And if you're using a smooth hound, 8ms will be taken up by that alone.