I just wanna have fun
Although SARS-Covid-19 may be behind the adoption of platforms like Zoom and Jamkazam for online music collaboration, it is also true that the idea of being able to jam with others from the comfort of your own home studio is quite appealing. You don’t need to dismantle everything and lug your equipment around in shopping trolleys for example. You also don’t need to pay for storage or stuffy rehearsal rooms. Yeah, okay, if you want to play live in physical spaces in the gaps between lockdowns, you probably want to get together now and again. But personally, I just want to experiment, have fun, socialise a bit, record something, and get inspired. In fact, we don’t even have to compare face-to-face jamming to online, they are just different. The real transformative aspect of these emerging platforms is that you can do things that would be otherwise impossible.
As described in a previous post, we tried Zoom first and then moved onto Jamkazam, both with their pros and cons, but ultimately we don’t want to pay for it. So, after shopping around a bit this led us to Jamulus.
First impressions of Jamulus
Jamulus looks basic, it doesn’t have any recording and video facilities, so you have to record the audio you receive from your computer. We recorded to a Zoom R16. At first it would appear that you can’t really remix levels or edit individual instruments post jam. However, you can pan instruments, so with only two people you can pan left and right and have separate tracks for your DAW. With more than two you will have to pan strategically, perhaps grouping similar frequencies.
Even in social isolation you are not alone!
The other weird thing is that you don’t connect directly with your jamming buddies, you connect to a server full of random people. You can mute them, but be aware that someone could be listening to you while you clean your guitar strings with rosin, or chat about random stuff. We connected to the central server in Germany to hopefully get lower latency between Italy and the UK, and it actually worked pretty well. One of us was providing rhythm, the other bass. The audio was recorded at the bass end, so the bass would be in time with the rhythm it was following. The next test will be to see how this works with more musicians.
Settings
There are settings to improve things further. I don’t know what I’m doing but this set-up seemed to work for me.
Results
This is the album that came out of it. It is a selection of cuts, with some reverb added, and some realignment of parts. Enjoy!
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