And a link just in case the forum crops the picture

Which is all fine and good, but practically speaking, everybody needs to be playing off a metronome/drum machine/click or it falls apart quickly because you can’t make tempo adjustments based on what you’re hearing, because that adjustment will cause a ripple effect to other players.

Best case scenario right now is to have everyone slave off a drum machine, or possibly only the drummer has a click in his ear, and never strays off that. But having played with people my whole life, it’s difficult to resist the temptation to follow a bass player and abandon the click.

Interesting. This kind of how I have been picturing it in my head. But then when you add more than 2 people?

leeastone
Interesting. This kind of how I have been picturing it in my head. But then when you add more than 2 people?

It doesn't really change anything: when the the new arrival's stream reaches them, they just have to listen, to figure out what's going on before playing.

Honestly, good jam etiquette is kind of universal. If you've ever been to Jam Nights and/or sat in with bands, particularly improv settings, you know to:

- Just listen for a while; turn your volume down and start simple. With Jammr, you have the luxury of turning off Send and turning on Direct Monitoring (or whatever routing you can do so you can hear, but they can't, if you're in the box with VSTis, etc.);

- solo when it's your turn: with a wink or a nod, or least wait until the other soloist is finished before coming in; difficult to do when you don't have eye-contact, but less is more as always, and if there isn't a solo for an interval, so be it.

In my limited experience so far with Jammr sessions (~10 hours), here's what I've noticed: when I was the room “tempo leader” and had a drum machine going (and ignored the room click/room interval), people – who can play on time – were able to hone in and play along pretty well, because when my sound arrived at their headphones, they heard a rock-solid drum machine and just started playing off of that.

As far as musical progressions, that really depended on the experience of the players and having someone pipe up on their microphone and say “ok guys, this is in A minor and goes like this…” at which point the better players would listen and start playing along.

Honestly, some etiquette could go a long way to “fix” the seemingly “technical” issues with Jammr. Even if we transported all the room participants magically to a room somewhere, there's a good chance that it'll fall apart of the players aren't listening to each other…

… which leads me to my point about following the robotic overlord for timing: it has been a challenge (for me, anyways) to stay locked into the click source for long periods of time if I'm playing e-drums along with it, because your attention is constantly being challenged by other players that are “close” but not quite “on” with the click: you start hearing a bass line that's close, but maybe a little late/behind on the beat (which is a totally normal thing and where I usually live with the music I play), and man, do I ever want to kill the click at that point and just follow that sexy bass!

Good video hear talking about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB_G32rKNS0

Now I'm not the best click player: I've spent way too long playing off of bass players, feeding off of each other, being in the pocket together, speeding up when it felt right, slowing down when it felt right too. That is going to be a challenge for me, to do that, but with a click going.

I might try the next jam with a click source in my ear only, and see how that goes; at the very least, it's good practice for me and I've been spending more time off of Jammr and practicing against a click source.

I agree there needs to be a heavy reliance on etiquette. So far my experience has been best when people are playing in a key as opposed to trying to play a “song”. Things end up just working if you don't think about what is happening too hard.

Playing to a click is not my strong point, I'm very much a lock in with the bassist guy. So yeah its been an interesting experience. Kind of ended up just playing bass myself to try and get a handle on how best to play with the whole interval loops setup.

I've been playing drums to a click for a long time, it's a skill that improves your playing no matter the instrument. For Jammr, I try to find rooms that don't have a drummer, and I will follow the click religiously. If people aren't using a click, I'm going to follow it anyway until they fall in line, it takes an interval or two.

Captaincancel - the problem with drum machines is the MIDI clock from jammr is broken, so even if you set your machine to match the tempo, it's going to drift. Maybe for 2 or 3 players that might work for a while, but I've been on sessions where it completely falls apart because the drum machine eventually is not in sync with the interval.

Which gets me to another important point. I regularly join jams where people are playing progressions (ie 12 bar blues) that don't align with the interval. This usually means that every other interval, the guitar and the bass are playing different chords. If people are following a drummer or a drum machine, and not paying attention to the click or interval, then they may think everything sounds great because they're playing in sync to what they hear, but what's getting sent to everyone else is all over the place.

Unfortunately I heard that happen waaaay too many times today. Concept proved and accepted.

julian_vickers
Unfortunately I heard that happen waaaay too many times today. Concept proved and accepted.

What instrument were you playing today?

eb_liveDrums

I migrated between bass and sax today.

Ok so that's interesting: does the interval determine the rate at which you receive audio? i.e. if something is delayed by 30ms (interface + Internet), does Jammr take that into account and bump the packets to the next interval?

I figured if a constant stream of 100% accurate drumming was fed into the room, regardless of where it came from, everyone would eventually hear it, so could play along.

I most definitely have experienced in time jamming coming from various drum machines, but you're right, the interval might've been out, or they were just jamming in a key of A minor, so the intervals weren't as important.

The problem with the room click is it gets drowned out pretty easily once a few people jump in with loud instruments and if it's not loud for me, I have a hard time following it, especially if there are other guys that are close, but not on, so now you're fighting against it.

Most definitely need to practice my click-playing anyways, so why not do it with Jammr while I'm cooped up?