eJamming - The idea is to let musicians practice together even when they can’t get together physically, or to let students and teachers work together remotely.
Seems like a very cool idea, though Im not convinced that it wont have stall and buffering problems.
There are really interesting technical challenges to making this work. Not only do you have to transmit very high quality audio, but you have to do it with extremely low audio latency. The eJamming founders, Alan Glueckman and Gail Kantor, told me their audio processor and peer-to-peer technology solves these issues, and they’re going to demo their new product on Wednesday
Glueckman says he had his cousin, Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer, in mind when he built this product. The idea being that Aerosmith can still have rehearsals when one or more band members are out of town. Kramer hasn’t yet tried the product, Glueckman told me. I also ran this idea by my wife, who plays in a string quartet. She scoffed at it, since so much of performing, rehearsing, and teaching, she said, depends on subtle visual and personal cues that can’t be transmitted over a network. The eJamming team hopes to add video to the product at some point.
The problem it would seem might be that music is all about in time, so one little network blip, you lost the synq. I also think a very relevant aspect is brought up by his wife, in regards to the visual signals element. It would also be difficult to sort the levels for a live instrument against one coming through headphones or PC speakers! Any thoughts on this? Any readers of this blog musicians? Do you think this could be a way for Sunday morning practises to happen with all band members still in bed ;)?
HT: Cnet News via LifeHackers
2 responses so far ↓
1 Alan Glueckman // Feb 4, 2007 at 12:42 am
Thanks, guys, for your posts. This is Alan from eJamming here, and I’d like to clear up a few things you’ve raised, if I can.
The way eJamming AUDiiO works, we eliminate stalls and buffering, even in the live jam - you’ll just have to hear it for yourself that it works as promised. And we’ve worked hard to get the sound of the live jam audio to be rich and pleasing, even as we’ve thinned it (we don’t compress it), so as to minimize the amount of audio data we transmit across the web. Plus we still have full MIDI capability for those who want it.
Everybody at eJamming is a musician, so we’re absolutely obsessed with creating synchrony and keeping everyone in the pocket (actually, we won our patent on our synchronization technology - and no other music collaboration system has it).
And as for keeping track of instruments without visuals - we’ve been using eJamming MIDI and AUDiiO for over 3 years now as we developed and tested it, and you can absolutely work without visual cues - but again, you’ll have to find that out for yourself. We are, however, planning to add a low latency video system soon, for those musicians who prefer to have it.
And while the audio in the live jam is “thinned”, the final recording of each performance is CD quality and synchronized, so you can export it to your mixing/editing/sequencing software and burn it or turn it into MP3s or iPod format.
We see a broader range of uses than raised here. We see musicians using eJamming AUDiiO for writing and arranging, for auditioning, for accompanying vocalists, for rehearsing, for demo recordings, for teaching and learning, for practicing lessons (it’s more fun practicing with friends) and for just plain relaxation, jamming and fun. All without leaving home or studio (sorry about leaving out the beer, though).
Thanks for taking the time to comment and to read my clarifications.
Alan
2 Jon // Feb 1, 2008 at 3:39 am
I read up a bit on it.
$15/mo is going to cut down on your customers a lot. The free trial should include more than one session, in case your first is a bummer: someone that doesn’t suit your style or similar things.
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