eJamming, which launched v.1.0 today, allows musicians located anywhere to get together for jam sessions. Your drummer’s in New York, lead guitar is in India, your bass player is somewhere else, and you’re on keyboard. No problem. eJamming lets you jam anyway. And you can talk to the other musicians via a VOIP feature.
All you need is digital instrument (midi enabled) and an internet connected computer. Download the client (Mac or PC), and either get the old band back together virtually or find a musician on the service. See the demo here.
eJamming has a one week free trial and it’s $20 a month after that. Price plans are here.
The only instrument I ever played was a Recorder in 4th grade..so if anyone with musical skills tries it out, please ping me with your review. I’m particularly interesting in how eJamming handles latency issues. They discuss the issue here and say “eJamming’s patented algorithms delay the sounding of your instrument until you receive music data from your fellow eJammers.” They go on:
Musicians accommodate their playing to other musicians all the time, ever-so-slightly altering their attack in different situations. The players who’ve been testing eJamming — including the most proficient and skeptical we could find — have accommodated very quickly to these instrument-feel delays (surprisingly quickly), and many have found they can even deal with the 50-90mS delays when collaborating from the East Coast of the US to Eastern Europe.
Distributed/edge jamming sessions…how cool is that?
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Reminds me of a more web-ish Ninjam
Sounds cool, though I don’t think too many musicians actually have a way to easily mic their stuff into midi on a computer with a web connection (I certainly don’t). Also, since the latency issues can go both ways, I don’t see how one could accomodate for this. If my guitarist is slow in a live set, I can match up with him, but not if he also hears me as being offbeat.
In any case, cool idea, I hope it works out well for them!
Any “jammer” knows that the beauty of jamming is being in the SAME ROOM as the people and feeling the vibration and passion of every note.
I saw a Russian company that had developed a similar product - the company is called OmniMusic and they won MSFT’s Imagine Software Design Cup for college students in 2005. I’m not sure if they have released product but I did see them at an investor symposium last fall.
Reminds me of resrocket (as it was ten years ago.) Resrocket used to be midi, and free, however it was non realtime. You were given a standard 16 track midi recording interface, with a timeline. You were in control of all tracks, just adding segments. You would hit the send button, and other clients would recieve your segments. It was cool. I would spend hours dialed into AOL to use it. ResRocket later expanded into full audio with a pay-to-use service that used one of the popular multitrackers (Logic, I think) Anyway, they were fun times, and I wish somebody would write somthing like it, open source, for all 3 major OSes.
I really think that his is one of those extraordinary tools that will eventually go beyond its original intention.
Whether this particular company makes it in this space or not won’t matter, but is seems it’s one of those inventions that will be used by the customer to take it beyond what the company thought it would be used for.
Actually, Mike (and I remember this painfully well,) Grades 2 thru 4 were your ‘musical years’. In addition to the Recorder, you took lessons on the Accordian (as evidence, I still have an 8-track tape with your complete repertoire of 3 songs.)Then came the set of drums that you just had to have. That particular progression created a neighborhood sensation, which caused your mother and me to steer you towards a career in Law.
Dad
Hmmmm
Ninjam is alot better.
Most people don’t have MIDI devices on their computers.
NINJAM IS PLUG AND PLAY, NO MIDI REQUIRED.
Check out http://www.ninjam.com.
ok, ninjam looks interesting, but the UI on eJamming is clearly built for more of a mass audience. I’m going to dig deeper.
This idea has constantly reborn every few years, since the 80’s and it’s always a bad idea, and always flops. why do people think playing music with someone far away is interesting?
They don’t necessarily have to be far away for me to be interested in playing with them. They just have to be available when I’m available.
Unfortunately for me I work all freakin day and tak e classes several nights during the week in addition to having a wife and kids.
Living in the suburbs ther aren’t as many people around that play and even fewer places to get together.
I agree playing with people in the same room is ideal, but if you can’t be with the ones you jam with then jam with the ones your with?
Oh that is bad. Sorry about that.
Mike,
Yeah, I came across both Ninjam and eJamming last year. I had the same reaction as you (”this rocks!”). I was planning to build a similar tool - where people could instantly find a guitarist/drummer/singer to jam with - and then sell subscription services on top.
But after playing with these tools for a few weeks, they really aren’t as great as you’d imagine. Not only are there constant problems with the setup (think Skype but ten times worse), but the latency is a real killer. Yes, they correct for latency, but it’s still a real pain.
I think Tim is right. The idea is cool, but in reality these tools don’t live up to expectations.
This idea has failed about 5 times already.
Any latency is killer.
One of the good parts about jamming is the social interaction. You lose that.
Well, I am not a musician, but this service lacks something… like every possible social feature, that you can make by this software. The whole idea could rock and roll, if you could find other musicians and try to jam with them, peak in other sessions, and try only for you to join without disturbing others or something like that… This is boring. You have to already know people (so why though net?) and if you’re beginner and would love to join someone, but your skills are not good enough, you’ve got a problem and this won’t help you…. is this web 2.0 service? I hope someone will reinvent this in proper “web 2.0″ style.
Ehm, sorry found that their are some social features, but still think it could have been done all a bit better.
There was a similar system called ‘Rocket’ a few years ago, that was a way of playing around the world, it was integrated into all major audio systems at the time, but due to budgets didn’t work….I’m very involved in music and I personally don’t want to jamm with weirdos from other places…always thought jamming was boring…unless you’re writing with friends…just my veiw….if you are a digital musician check http://www.emasters.co.uk cheap way of getting quality mastering….
Not sure how latency could be fully overcome. Personally, it would drive me nuts to have everyone in the band half a second off from everyone else. Good luck to them, but I’d say zero latency would be a must have for jamming.
“delay the sounding of your instrument until you receive music data from your fellow eJammers”
They’re kidding, right? As any musician would know, any artificial delay in the sounding of the instrument will seriously compromise the musician’s timing and destroy the possibility of having a tight-sounding groove.
50-90ms latency is way too much. Try running your guitar or piano through a 50 ms delay effect and see just how much of a delay it really is. It might not see like a lot, but it’s an eternity in music time.
In my experience delay must be kept under 15ms at the maximum.
MIDI data means no latency, because it is really just small packets of text representing musical info.
You can get a USB-MIDI interface for about $30 from any computer store.
And for the record, you can make your drumkits and guitars/bass guitars MIDI capable with the use of drum triggers or MIDI pickups.
IGNORANCE DETECTOR:
“MIDI data means no latency”
ERRNRNNNRNRNRNNRNRNRNRN
This is totally incorrect and indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of latency.
You can definitely have a lower latency if you’re transfering smaller packets of data, but there is always still latency.
I’m with all of the skeptics here - great idea, but the internet is still not ready for it. Latency is absolutely crucial to responsive and accurate musical timing, there is no “fudging” it.
It took sound card manufacturers YEARS to solve the latency problem, and all that did was minimize the delay between the time you hit a key in your own house and hear the sound on your own speakers.
It will be years if not decades before this idea makes a real impact on music and jamming. Until I’m able to hit a key in my house on the west coast and instantly create sound in your house on the west coast, this is just a gimmick.
I hooked up iChat with eJamming today and exchanged ideas with a guy in London!
I had a blast! I even bussed it to Reason and we collaborated on patches. Next I’m going to experiment with bussing it to the sequencer in my ProTools HD for easier editing.
Of course you’re not going to play Giant Steps at breakneck speeds . . .
However, it’s a heck of a lot faster than telephone delays AND I HAD FUN!!! That was worth the price of admission.
In a week I’m writing with someone who is local so the initial delays should be significantly less . . . I’ll let you know.
I like this idea, and I would love to be able to play with like-minded musicians regardless of where they live.
Regarding latency, it’s quite possible to have a low-latency conversation over the net, isn’t it? I can picture an app that would let the musicians hear the other musicians at a reduced bandwidth in realtime, but as soon as they stop, the full-bandwidth audio is sent to all participants. Forget about MIDI, it’s no good for anything but General MIDI sounds (the listener would not hear the same sounds you’re playing unless he/she had the same instrument/patch to play the MIDI through), it needs to be done with audio data. It’ll happen, it’s just a matter of when and by whom. Personally I’m looking forward to it.
I have been testing ejamming for about 4 months now in order to work out all the kinks in the system. Fortunately, latency is not one of them (with the proper settings). Ejamming is further developing their software so that it adjusts your settings based on the ping rate to each player. I have played with a 100m/s delay before (from LA to Israel) and it sounded like it was two feet away because of the sync settings. Last month, I had a jam with musicians from England, Israel, New York, Florida, and Australia without problem (I’m from Los Angeles). As a professional musician, I can tell you that this program far exceeds any skype or Ninjam application.
ninjam wins hands down, firstly its free, and secondly i can play anything i want through the mic, just try singing in ejamming.
Well…if you cannot hear the difference in latency, more power to you…although I don’t foresee any paying gigs for you in the future.
Also…despite the great samples of musicianship amongst Ninjam’s clients, the professional music world seeks great sound quality, which is not yet possible when recording raw audio through the Internet. Although eJamming shares a similar ambition with Ninjam, the eJamming program is made to work as a casual jam application, but with a capacity for professional recording. Unfortunately, Ninjam’s sound quality can be used for little more than a casual jam.
Ohhh…vocals can be added later, but locally.
Havnt tried Ejam yet but was using Ninjam… The sound is absolutly amazing. However the delay is the killer. Ill play fast beebop songs (im a drummer) with a guitarist friend, and it sounds on time to me.. to him im playing the head 2 measures behind him. BLAH. So, its amazing, sounds stunning, but youll have to write some new forms of music with it…
Ninjam is great for jamming, but can’t function as an efficient recording program. When you need to record an album or just jam in high quality with no latency…I would suggest eJamming.
Personally, I find the idea of playing guitar and having that converted to MIDI quite ridiculous– sure, it may be useful for composing, but for jamming, it is completely absurd.
@McPhystal.
Callilng bullshit.
NINJAM records just beautifully with high quality multi-track OGG’s.
Also, your notion of there not being any perceptable nor affecting latency is utter.complete.bullshit.
Admittedly, NINJAM is different.
It *lengthens* latency, quite nicely in fact, to make things work.
Also, I can pick up my guitar and play.
You must have a midi guitar or sumtin.
Because you haven’t tried it, you can’t say shit. By the way…what are your credentials Crypto? I have been trained through a professional and college music cirriculum. I also perform and teach music as a professional. Your idea of “quite nicely” (with regards to latency) won’t cut it in the professional world. I have experienced latencies using Ninjam, that exceed single measures of music. Ejamming starts with small latencies created by an inconsistent Internet, but actually corrects them.
Stan, your comment that MIDI is not good for jamming is silly. The Grateful Dead used MIDI for years in live concerts, to great effect. Garcia used a variety of horn and flute sounds over the years that sounded great in concert and on live albums.
I agree with Sean, interaction is what feeds creativity in a jam, it is all about the groove, not sure how to do this from afar with a machine in between.
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