I want to Play with You

It's been one of the coolest things being a musician and being able to share my music online. One  aspect of the internet is that musicians can of course collaborate easily together. With a few applications available we can also jam together in Realtime.

 For some , trying to  duet together on skype is a way to at least practice.  Skype is not an ideal collab tool for musicians, mainly due to latency and  the inability to really tweak the audio levels and generally the  quality is pretty low compared to other applications.

Another  way  to  jam together is to use  a daisy chain stream ( or relay), basically you need  several streams for each musician to hook into and they then  hijack each stream (in a chain), until eventually  you can have an single stream  with everyone hooked up, This is a great way to jam, unfortunately the person before you on  the stream  cannot hear the person in front.  It also requires a lot of practice. 

I have  posted a shot clip of a multi relay jam  I did with  4 other musicians back in 2006, live into SL, The quality of course is not perfect at all, and to have that many people one one stream requires a great deal of practice  to get levels, and timing correct. However we all had a lot of fun and proved that  you are not just  tied to a duet or trio.  Some distortion and timing issues but for a spontaneous 1st try out, I think we did pretty ok!
The jam was with Juel Resistance, Ricardo Sprocket, Myself, Melvin Took  and DimiVan Ludwig

 There are  a few applications/software  and websites that will now allow you to jam creatively online in realtime with other musicians and I will list them below!

Back in 2005, Justin Frankel, ( creator of Winamp), announced a new product called Ninjam that allowed multiple musicians to jam online with actual audio ( not  Midi).The music is delayed by a few measures to keep everything in sync. You can have up to 10 on one server, although the standard seems to be between 4-5 max for a good sound.This is currently free to use
NINJAM
There is also a  forum for ninjam
NINJAM FORUM


In 2006 Alan Glueckman founded EJamming. At first the  format was the compression standard, the familiar MIDI.This has expanded with  the  new 2010 version  ( audio )  and can now connect up to 4 musicians in an improved ' Live' track by track recording session. This has a Free trial and then I believe a US$9.95 subscription charge
EJAMMING

Another online jamming website is
 ONLINE JAM SESSIONS
They have 3 free rooms to try out, After signup you have levels of membership to sign up to including  Live Video  function.

And Last but not least is RiffLink
RiffWorks  T4 is Free,  and Riff Works Standard is US$129
RIFFLINK

Having tried both Ejamming ( when it was Midi) and also Ninjam, for preference I would choose Ninjam. it has an easy to use interface and  of course it is free :)
 But DO go and try them all out!

  For at least 4 years many  musicians using Second Life  have also taken advantage of  Daisy Chain Streaming then  Ninjam or Ejamming  to present shows in SL.
A  familiar Band name to many of you is of course the SL Band 'V.L.B'  founded in 2007 ( currently 4 members) using Ninjam, who have toured extensively in SL.
 V.L.B

 The Video below is  with SL Musician JooZz  ( Netherlands)
Torben Scharling ( Copenhagen)
Andy McIce Man ( UK)

This is the recording of a totally spontaneous Live Jam  using Ninjam



Happy Jamming  :)