Online Jamming 4.0

If you’d like some background on online jamming, you can check out my previous posts: Online Jamming 1.0, Online jamming 1.5, Online jamming 2.0, and Online jamming 3.0.

It is now 2024 and 2020 is starting to feel like history, but for obvious reasons, that was when we got our first taste for online jamming. First it was through Zoom, then Jamkazam and Jamulus, but finally we settled on Sonobus due to its recording capabilities. Since then our online jamming collection is almost outnumbering those carefully crafted multitrack albums.

I was driven to write about this again because I feel like things have reached a new level. It might just be because I have a better internet connection or thanks to updates, who knows? All I can say is that in the last jam we had Zoom and Sonobus running simultaneously and I could actually see Doug playing those funky bass lines with what seemed to be near zero latency. Not only that, but we were playing publicly with random people from all over the world.

I’ll stick the ‘album’ here ____ when I get round to mixing it.

This all opens up a couple of new possibilities: The first is live streaming a jam on a fixed day/date; The second is setting up a ‘hybrid’ performance in a venue. Both of these are exciting prospects and I will let whoever reads this waffle know if it should ever take place.

Orange Chess Set

The Album

Let me take you back to Tuscany in 2002ish. I lived in Tuscany for 2 years busking until ill health and life drove me on. While I was there I recorded 4 albums. Orange Chess Set was written and recorded in a week, on a wonderful Tascam 4-track cassette recorder. I had a guitar, some sunshine, and a flat full of cheap plastic toys all to myself with nothing else to do. The results led to some music bordering on the cheerful side of things, even if the lyrics rarely are.

The Track Breakdown

Dawn: The first track starts with some TV, a melodica, and the toy orchestra at my disposal. To me it sounds like the sun rising on the gentle hills of Tuscany, with a bit of imagination.

TheSameMoon: No matter where you are on Earth, two people can look at the same moon, amongst other celestial objects, simultaneously. The lyrics suggest I was feeling slightly homesick and isolated in that sunny flat full of toys. The music is built on an over-bounced detuned analogue tape distortion drenched guitar chord sequence in 3/4.

TheSamePain: I sound quite fed-up in this track too, but that was where I always used to find inspiration for lyrics, happiness is boring, or perhaps boredom is happiness. The timing seems to be 6/4 maybe. It sounds like I raided the kitchen on this one.

PlasticAlienHead: As the title suggests the kick drum sound was a plastic alien head. I think pitch shifting was used here to get that accelerated feel and simulate a bass guitar sound with my guitar. You will also hear my lost New York slide whistle in the background.

TurnToMush: Think too much and your head will turn to mush. Without going into details, I think this song is basically a dissapointed conversation with my rather confused self at the time. Anyway, the music makes extensive use of a coconut.

Volpino: This starts with a couple of gentle guitar riffs which loop till the end. In the semi-background Fab’s voice telling a story to Jary is mixed with a field recording of audience chitchat from a concert in Perugia. At the end these sounds are warped with a Boss delay pedal (still got it) to transport you onwards.

AllMustChange: First signs of some class awareness in the lyrics here, something that would grow the more I busked for a living and tried to live outside the rigged class system of my human farm and any consequent prescribed destiny.

Balloony: Balloons! Once, one of my go-to versatile musical instruments, balloons take the centre stage here. The melodica is playing around on a major scale meme and the whole kitchenware range was employed for the percussion. There is also a talking drum I picked up at Arezzo Wave, which was sadly destroyed by a disadvantaged child in an after school club in Plumsted some years later, at least he seemed to enjoy it.

Hisstory: Humming and guitar riffs in harmony (thirds I think) make up this instrumental dreamscape. As with most of my music, lost to my sieve-brain memory but fossilised here in 1s and 0s for your listening pleasure.

Look: We had a car in Arezzo, first and last time in my life, not that I can drive. It was great for getting around, but did feel like I was going to die at any moment. And, we did in fact crash while listening to this album. You are more likely to die in a kitchen, as I did, for the first time, just before recording this album.

OhhEeeUrp: So, you have a 4 track with pitch shifting capabilities, what should you do with it? How about recording for half a second, pausing, changing the pitch, and then recording another half a second until you get bored. That’s what this track is. You will also hear the first track playing backwards on the other side of the cassette. Enjoy!

Oh, I also made an orange chess set around the time of this recording, with the intention to start selling them. Never happened though.

Here is the full album

Online Jamulus Part 3.0

After the jam part 2.0 in two at the end of January, we moved onto the next phase of Jamulus experimentation with four musicians.

As always the usual preparations were made to make sure everything runs smoothly.

Unfortunately, the jam did not quite go to plan when it came to capturing the magic, but there were plenty to things to learn.

1. Even if your bass player is capable of some incredibly funky bass lines, they should not record themselves on all the tracks. Basically, if you are multi tracking be careful with that direct monitoring switch on your sound card.
2. Remember to use an ethernet cable! The sound of a breaking up WIFI signal in the midst of a mouse hunt is still ahead of its time, even for Aphex.
3. Remove all cats from the building, especially if they are called Toby and they like playing with mice near your WIFI router.
4. Limit yourself to less than 10 sound sources each if you want a clear signal.
5. Unmute those mute buttons from time to time in Jamulus, someone might be singing along.

Anyway, after dissecting the 2 hour jam this is what I extracted. See if you can hear the mice.

Recording is an issue with Jamulus. There is only so much you can do with pan pots to separate the sounds. So, my mate in Greenwich has a cunning plan. Why not set up 3 computers with 3 sound cards, running 3 Jamulus programs? Obvious, innit? Then you can pan them all hard left and right and route them to a multitrack…(Zoom R16) and record your bass 6 times with direct monitoring on 😉

Let’s see what happens next time!

The Wrong Samples

Dear imaginary readers, this is a reflection on making a sample pack for volca sample and beyond. Before we commence, here are the samples in action.

Driven by the need for my own sounds on my humble volca sample, I proceeded to record and install a complete 100 sound palette onto the device. I recorded each sound into Logic as a 2 bar loop, which sounded like this.

It was a good exercise in miking up instruments, setting levels and processing sounds. I then auto-spliced the sounds in logic and deleted all the peripheral sounds and empty space. I couldn’t find a way to master to mono from the iZotope Ozone 6 software I have, so I used outboard and in-the-box compression on each sound and balanced the volumes from logic in the end.

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However, on my first attempt at installing the sounds I ran out of space at just 27 sounds. Then started the arduous process of trimming each sound one by one to its bare essence. The total file size needed to be 4mb!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I got there in the end and now my volca sample is full of the sounds from my studio.

If you would like to try them out, you can download them from here.