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Are there any social networks available that would allow two or more musicians to play together real time over the internet? If there is how well does it work? Any tips on how to do this?

Radar wrote:Are there any social networks available that would allow two or more musicians to play together real time over the internet? If there is how well does it work? Any tips on how to do this?

Short answer, no. The problem is latency. All of the internet-based protocols have relatively high latency--on the order of half a second or even longer. By the time you heard the other person, you're already a beat behind, and by the time they hear you, you sound like you are two beats behind. Then, they correct, and it unravels immediately.

Even the big networks have this problem, and have learned (mostly because of satellite communications, which have even higher latency) to wait for the time required for the person on the other end to catch up to what they are hearing before assuming they didn't hear it.

If you have a real landline, and so does your duet partner, you might have low enough latency. But then you have the next problem--communications these days is often simplex, or "half-duplex", meaning that when you are sending, you cannot receive. This is common on phone networks, but a lot of the newer internet-based services (Zoom, Teams, etc.) are full duplex. But they have the latency problem.

There are ways to deal with this, but not that are cheap or quick, to my understanding.

Rick "a professional trainer currently grounded and searching for solutions" Denney

Get you and your buddies together, and hang out in a parking lot somewhere 6 feet away from each other.

Verizon offers video calling. Both folks have to have Verizon service and an appropriate handset. I don't use it.

This is an educated(ish) guess, probably not related to the original post:
When you see videos of folks playing together remotely, they're always wearing headphones or at least one earbud. Each person surely records his or her own part independently. I would assume there is some sort of click track in their ears (ie, why the headphones or earbuds are needed) to keep them "together". I would guess that click track makes it somewhat easier to re-assemble the final product. I would be curious how this actually works.

SWE wrote:

Rick Denney wrote:If you have a real landline, and so does your duet partner, you might have low enough latency.

Back in the day (e.g. 1970s) would it have been possible to rig up a system for 2 people playing with each other? My memory is basically zero latency but I never tried playing music over the phone.

Yes. Circuit-switched protocols could provide low latency, because routing was done in hardware rather than software and the voice signals were analog anyway. But the bandwidth was limited. Radio stations would run remotes over the phone, but would use companders to give the impression of more bandwidth (it was an aural illusion, of course).

The degree to which ADC's and DAC's worry about timing suggests that even between the source audio and the computer, latency, especially variable latency, is a problem. But with high enough speed, that can be overcome. The problem going over the internet is that the audio stream first has to be divided into packets, and each packet carries routing and error-correction information. The protocol at each end then has to check to make sure each packet was sent correctly, assembled in the correct order, and turned back into an audio stream. Every packet has to be routed over an indeterminate network (its indeterminacy is why they call it the "cloud"), so they can't tell how many routers and DNS servers it will have to visit to get to the right place. 12-15 hops is common, each one delaying the signal a little bit. That processing takes time, and the greater the bandwidth of the audio (bit depth times sampling rate), the longer it takes. In practice, the streaming services greatly simplify (through compression) the audio signal, which is why my iPhone sounds unrealistic when connecting through WiFi despite its added highs and lows. But they have to do compression with consumer-grade internet services just to keep the voice hanging together most of the time.

The network news people and talk-show hosts who are using home studios are using rather high-end equipment and very high-speed services to get their signals to the studio. But listen to their guests, most of whom have very high-speed service (as in 100 megabits/second or even "gig-speed"), because they live in cities where such services are available at a price those celebrities can afford. I guarantee that the performers on American Idol last night were using highly upgraded fiber-based service and very high-end equipment to put out the audio quality we heard (which still wasn't that great). We were told they received microphones and a ring light, but I'll bet that the "microphone" they received included a bunch of other stuff. But I guarantee they were adding accompaniments after the fact, or producing the accompaniment from a sequencer in the room with the performer.

When I heard my own voice coming out of the speaker of the person I'm talking to, which happens when the rejection technology misses something, it's always half a second to a second later. Lots of software trickery going on to mask all those effects, but those eat up even more processing cycles.

Rick "we always demand a little bit more than our services can provide, and they can never quite keep up" Denney

cjk wrote:Verizon offers video calling. Both folks have to have Verizon service and an appropriate handset. I don't use it.

This is an educated(ish) guess, probably not related to the original post:
When you see videos of folks playing together remotely, they're always wearing headphones or at least one earbud. Each person surely records his or her own part independently. I would assume there is some sort of click track in their ears (ie, why the headphones or earbuds are needed) to keep them "together". I would guess that click track makes it somewhat easier to re-assemble the final product. I would be curious how this actually works.

My quintet has been pondering recording some stuff, and all of what we've been considering would be based on a click track. I have to be the one to come up with the click track, because everyone would want to layer what they do on top of the tuba part for the music we've been considering.

I think it's quite possible for really good musicians to memories the timing to so-called backing tracks without a click track. Some of the prog rock I enjoy was made by passing tracks back and forth, even back when the tracks were on two-inch 24-track tape. The keyboardist (say, Rick Wakeman) would lay down a backing track, which may or may not be the track he would ultimately leave in the mix. Then the bassist (say, Chris Squire or Lee Pomeroy) and drummer (say, Tony Fernandez or Alan White) would lay down a bass/percussion line. Those two tracks would be learned by the guitarist (say, Steve Howe or Trevor Rabin) who would lay down the guitar licks, and so on. The whole group may never be in the studio at one time. But they would be listening to the tracks they are synching with in headphones, and would have listened to it several times.

But if my quintet wanted to work on something independently to be edited together, which is most of what I've seen, we would all play to a click track.

Rick "who has a microphone, mixer, ADC, and computer, waiting for the time to mess with it" Denney

cjk wrote: This is an educated(ish) guess, probably not related to the original post:
When you see videos of folks playing together remotely, they're always wearing headphones or at least one earbud. Each person surely records his or her own part independently. I would assume there is some sort of click track in their ears (ie, why the headphones or earbuds are needed) to keep them "together". I would guess that click track makes it somewhat easier to re-assemble the final product. I would be curious how this actually works.

Yes. Using a click track or a pre-existing recording of the piece as a guide track is the only way for an ensemble that is playing their individual parts remotely to have any chance of even being close to together. As you pointed out, it is exactly why they are all wearing earbuds in the videos.

The orchestra I work for did one of those videos that many have probably seen by using a click track that had to be created (one of the musicians actually created it and did a great job). Then each player has to practice with the click a few times to get used to it before they record their part on video themselves. The playing, despite how it appears on video, is not live or in sync with anyone else because of the latency issues that have been mentioned. Once the individual parts have been recorded, it’s all edited into what the general public sees. Most of the editing is to correct intonation variances, not timing, and rarely “video” issues, although all of the videos have to be assembled and sequenced into one file which ends up with the edited audio track put over the top.

Just for fun, the orchestra also tried a full orchestra reading of a piece with the Music Director via zoom. I guess it was “fun” but the latency issues made it an absolute disaster. It was an educational experience, however, as it was clearly what not to do. It was not for public consumption and more just to get everyone together and see what would happen.

Orchestra zoom performances are certainly the hot topic these days amongst my professional colleagues around the country.

Thanks Tom.

The guys I mainly play with here in the band, Swing Shift Austin, are planning to do something like this. I believe we will use the free app, Acapella. I don’t know anything about it at this point. I'll let everyone know if it takes place.