A Mark Kozu Inspired Notion…

[Tom Fones]

Jacki,

i look forward to sitting in the front row.  🙂

[Jacki Hopper]

Hi H. Thomas Fones, Thankyou, I’m serious  on wanting to do this make it happen, though I’m not by no means, a seasoned musician,  far from it but I do enjoy singing and playing tambourine, and would welcome the notion of doing an MLT Cover Online MLTBuzzLuvGrooving Jam Session either by Zoom or Facebook , to those who would be interested, mind you,  I am not quite familar yet with all that Zoom is about, it’s an ongoing learning with me on that…maybe Facebook version of Zoom   or some other format where we could  all jam virtually… then with Team MLT’s permission share it here…..?

[David Herrick]

I think it’s a great idea, Jacki, but I don’t know how much I could contribute.  I can strum ukulele chords on a few MLT songs, but I can never make it all the way through without messing up a couple of times.  Then again, if there were enough people participating, occasional mistakes by everyone involved might not be very noticeable.

I’d like to hear from Mark, or anyone else who has done this sort of thing, about how you manage to synchronize the sounds when you’re dealing with people thousands of kilometers apart from each other, where the finite speed of light could become a factor.  Apparently it works, but I wonder if it requires a lot of rehearsing and fine-tuning before everything meshes.

I’ve gotten quite a bit of experience using Zoom over the past few months, so I should be okay in that regard.

 

[Jung Roe]

Jacki, that sounds like a great idea and a lot of fun, and pretty rewarding to pull off, but for myself I’m not quite there yet with the piano to contribute much at this point, though I’d like to do something like that, in the not too distant future.  Maybe this is a call for me to dial up the piano practice intensity with a purpose.  In meantime perhaps some of the other musicians here might be interested in this project.

 

[Mark Kozu]

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Wonderful idea, Jacki.

The major issue with online jamming is how to deal with latency. If you’ve ever watched the news and seen the anchor person talking with someone who is not in the studio, you’ve probably noticed a delay while the signal travels from the studio to wherever the other person is. This is latency. If the latency is minimal then there is no problem with a simultaneous event (like singing) takes place. If the latency is high then the resulting singing sounds like a mish mash of voices. Zoom is really designed for video and not audio.

Online jamming software, like Jamulus (which is what I use) and Jamkazam are designed for audio so the latency can be reduced, but it is still there. I’m in Seattle and the guitarist I played with on the MLT cover is in San Jose. The other guitarist that I frequently play with is in Chicago. We normally use a Jamulus server in Seattle so I don’t have to deal with the latency, but the other guitarists do. We are trying to put together a song with 3 people from Europe. We chose a server in New Jersey so that we would all have comparable latency. Our latencies were in the 100-130ms range which means everyone is hearing everybody else about 1/10 second behind. It can be overcome, but it takes practice and concentration.

Jamulus is an audio only application. For WorldJam we take the audio from Jamulus, video from Zoom and sync them together through software called OBS Studio and then stream to Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch. For best results an audio interface is needed to get instruments/microphones connected to the internet. Audio interfaces start around $50. If any one wants more information about Jamulus I recommend joining the Jamulus (official) group or the Jamulus WorldJam group on Facebook. There are some US regional Jamulus groups as well. I am an administrator for the Jamulus WorldJam – Pacific NW group.

 

 

[Jung Roe]

Hi Mark, that’s all quite fascinating for me, this stuff is in my wheelhouse.  In my old job, I was involved in designing networks to minimize latency across North America and globally for financial institutions doing stock market traffic, and the way stocks trades it was amazing how low latency was critical.  The same for service providers doing Voice traffic over IP, low latency was everything to ensure voice call quality.  I can see now with the pandemic how music collaboration needs low latency bandwidth too.  At the company I worked at we did everything over our private fiber networks, bypassing the slow internet, and we had round trip latencies between London and New York down in the 65 millisecond range, and New York to Seattle in another 65 ms.  On some routes we groomed fiber routes to be as short as possible to minimize latency.  I guess unless we can find a way to speed up the speed of light over fiber optics, these latencies are going to be unavoidable when distance is involved.  Not sure if Jamulus World Jam uses the internet for it’s transport which can have longer latencies due to the unpredictable nature of the best effort internet hop to hop traffic routing versus a private network with all the Quality of Service that can be supported.  Thanks for that, was fun to clear the cob webs and talk shop.  🙂

 

[Mark Kozu]

Hi Jung. The beauty of Jamulus is that it is free open sourced software. It was developed by a guy named Volker in Germany a number of years ago to enable his band to be able to practice without having to spend time traveling to a location. Little did he know. . .

WorldJam is an organization run by, and paid for, by volunteers. We mostly use inexpensive shared cloud based servers. We do have a small sponsorship (which ends with this week’s upcoming show) that has helped defray some of the server costs. Most people find that they can play with around 50ms latency. I have played without issues with latencies in the 70ms range. The session that I mentioned earlier on a New Jersey server my latency was in the low 100’s and I struggled a bit. I am pretty sure with a little practice I’ll be able to handle it.

[Tom Fones]

I am sure that you geeks know this…

But if you are avoiding satellite hops you are probably optimizing speed.

Keep going Mark et al  🙂

 

[Jung Roe]

Hi Mark, Jamulus sounds brilliant.  Private networks are ridiculously expensive indeed, but going with some of the top tier Internet providers with good peering arrangements can help, as they maintain their own network for the internet to traverse and peer with other top tier internet network providers, and can ensure the internet traffic they provide stays predominantly on their own networks and or minimizes the number of 3rd party networks (ASNs) the traffic traverses before it reaches it’s destination.  You can get nearly private network level quality in some cases for minimal latency.  Most reputable public cloud service providers are partnered with top tiered ISPs anyway, but something to keep in mind, as some ultra low cost providers are low cost for a reason.

Thanks for the insight in to Jamulus.

[Jung Roe]

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Indeed Tom, 🙂   those satellites are great for coverage, bouncing signals into space, but not for keeping down delay/latency.  Interestingly when I got into the telecom career about 30 years ago, Microwave was the big transport medium with all the unreliability due to temperature inversions, fog, and flocks of birds migrating for the winter, and everything moved to fiber optics, but lately with the advances in Microwave technology and improved reliability, the industry is finding Microwave with line of sight deployment are providing some very low latency cost effective direct route paths that Fiber Optics sometimes have difficulty with when you have a major rivers, mountain, freeway or railroad tracks in the path requiring expensive fiber construction that could prevent a more direct route.  We may see more microwave towers again in the future, unless further advances in fiber happens.

So the future of low latency, cost effective music collaboration over big distances is looking better.

Thanks guys for letting me geek out.  🙂

[Jacki Hopper]

Hi again Mark, Thankyou for your  more in depth commentary on the tech aspect of how it goes  though  I’m not hardly tech savvy, and not sure half time how something  works, it ‘s  fascinating , thiugh I’ve no real full understanding  knowledge of how it all works. I  don’t  own a desktop computer, I only have  both my Android  tablet and phone…. but am still hopeful we can make this dreamwish event of  virtual jam session work, I ‘m very keen on wanting to try  to accomplish,  even if we can do  our parts individually/send privately  to each other and then somehow get it put together,  if virtual Jamulus not feasible…  I want to take part. I’d enjoy jamming ( singing /playing tambourine) with others, regardless  of their skills, Just a good ol  fun jam get together….. Pretty please with sugar on top….lol

[Mark Kozu]

Hi Jacki. I’m replying to you privately on this.