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!

Online Jamming Part 1.5

The Jammers

This is an out of sequence post jam blog post from the depths of a December social isolation jam long before the longest January in living memory. Actually, it is from two different jams but who cares.

The jam was facilitated through the Jamkazam platform between Naples, London, and Brighton. As you can see, we also employed Zoom for team binge drinking. The jammers were Doug, Andrew, Em, and John. Not quite sure if they should be named or referred to under pseudonyms to avoid trollers and the great tax algorithm in the cloud. Anyway, here’s a quick run down of the tracks on New Moons.

1. Encelado: Grating guitar chops, stretched strings, squelching bass, a beat from somewhere, and bongos.

2. Ameltea: Bladerunner spiralling bass and lost glockenspiel thirds that run into a roaring distortion engine.

3. Mimas: Taps dripping in a murky reverberating pond with mosquito one string Andrew classic guitar and slippery echo bass chops.

4. Romulus: Wobbly tremolo guitar sets the scene for some bass tapping and fingerpicking mellowness.

5. Io: Time for some delay drenched most unpopular snare sound on youTube, bass harmonics, drowning guitar and squeaks.

6. Europa: The stuttering snare is still there, some bass with some unidentified effect pedal and first signs of metallic modular squeals.

7. Ganimede: Sounds like somebody’s ringtone, but it’s actually a pre-set on the MicroKorg.

8. Luna: Bossanova Arturia beats from Brighton amazingly in sync with a high hat sample in Naples. Mind boggling what the universe can produce. Then cue the bizarre bubbling bass boogie riff from Greenwich to infinity.

9. Oberon: Disturbingly cheerful moment to end it all.

Online Jamming Part 2.0

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!