#50

FYI and quickly typed from phone: yesterday I did a short session where I had rtpmidi on windows, ableton as daw, externally synced via midi clock (via rtpmidi) over the internet, where the other end was my music buddy on osx (has rtpmidi inbuilt), where Cubase was sending midi clock. Latency was around 20ms which should be ok for syncing drum machines etc. He was on wifi, we will try tomorrow when both are cabled.
In parallel talking to each other with the help of whereby.com.
Obviously firewall ports need to be opened (5004 and 5005) for udp and port redirection done, so you should have some basic networking knowledge.
Also looking into jamulus, which can be self hosted for better latency (also open source)

2 Likes
#51

Anybody doing any remote jams? What technology are you using? How are you doing it? Should we jam? Tips and tricks appreciated.

1 Like
#52

I haven’t tried using JackTrip in a few years but that is the highest quality way to go I think. Michael Dessen just posted a great playlist introducing the system and how it can be used.

1 Like
#53

I haven’t tried JackTrip and would like to.

Here’s an approach I’ve used a great deal and we’ve had a ton of fun with it:

3 Likes
#54

Thanks I am going to give that a go

#57

netpd is great and has just been updated! i’m trying to organise jams every monday round 23h00 utc+2 (time zone in France)

#59

Unfortunately about 3 hours left in my work day at that hour.

#60

argh, time zones make my brain hurt. if you can suggest a good time for where you are, on the weekend or something then let me know!

#61

This is a handy tool

I’m usually up for a jam between 5pm and 3am UTC on weekend days, with a little advance warning.

1 Like
#62

thanks!
is that the same as between 3pm and 5pm UTC? now i’m really confused!

#63

Oops! Corrected my typo. 5pm-3am

#64

Hi, I just wanted to bring people’s attention to a system that is really very well adapted to collaborative music making in these days of social distancing, long hours at home, etc - Netpd (www.netpd.org). It’s a system built in Pure Data that creates a connection between remote computers and syncs a shared set of instruments, effects, and sequencers.

netpd-in-action
netpd-in-action1680×1050 304 KB

It requires Pd Vanilla and a handful of externals (listed in the readme). Lots of help is available on the website.

If anyone is interested in getting organised to get a few people on it at the same time we can use this thread…

… or use the new dedicated netpd forum http://untalk.netpd.org/

3 Likes
#65

Definitely interested in getting in on this. I’ve been interested such systems since the pandemic went down and would love to be a part of one that is already in such a mature state. I hadn’t heard of netpd until this post but it has certainly piqued my curiosity.

#66

great! if you have any problems setting it up or using it please post about it here so that we can help anyone else doing the same…

I recommend getting the netpd+instruments bundle from the netpd downloads page.
pd vanilla from here: https://puredata.info/downloads
the externals can be added using Pd’s ‘Help > Find Externals’ function

  • binfile
  • else
  • iemnet
  • iemlib
  • osc
  • slip
  • zexy
#67

I have it running. Just waiting for someone to host a server :wink:

#69

netpd provides a server so nobody else has to (although the server setup can be downloaded from github if you do want to have a private server)!

if no-one else is logged on you can still play around with the instruments and whoever joins will then download those instruments when they ‘unpatch’

so, to give you the netpd basics…
main.pd launches netpd with a chat window
unpatch opens up the instrument panel.
the instruments:
‘master’ - start/stop and tempo
‘mx’ - the mixer (add effects ‘e-lib’, ‘rfxlib’, ‘dynlib’) (click aux for aux channels)
each synth (‘sine’, ‘lilacid’, etc) has an unstep for sequencing or is triggered by ‘qseq3’
live audio can be streamed with ‘evil’

this is all the ‘readymade’ stuff but of course as it is pd the idea is also that you could build your own instruments and so on. they would just have to be given the netpd wrapper in order to become shareable.

#70

Because the software being used for remote choirs is LOW-latency, not NO-latency, perfect rhythmic unity is nearly impossible. Similarly, the unified choral sound typically asked for in traditional rep is also difficult to achieve. These two factors inspired C4 to curate, solicit, and create repertoire that embraces timbre, improvisation, and asynchronous performing, sometimes juxtaposing such sections with moments of metric unity in rhythmically simple and homophonic textures that don’t sound out of place with a little lag.

As I’ve written about previously, such aleatoric writing where individual performers have some creative control over their parts is not new to the music world, but it is uncommon in much of the choral world. Ensembles interested in shifting to a remote choir format, however, seem to show a surge of interest in pieces that allow for dense textures outside of the stereotypical four-part polyphony.

I think it’s fascinating that the technical constraints of network music are inspiring new forms of composition.

On another topic: did anybody get a chance to check out the Network Music Festival last weekend? I’m frustrated because my attention was elsewhere and so I missed it…

https://networkmusicfestival.org/

#71

I’ve been learning a lot about JackTrip and other audio streaming tools. I’ve been very impressed with the cost effectiveness and ease of using a cloud server for setting up JackTrip network music sessions. I’ve written up some instructions on how to do this in the gist below. I figure I’d share here in case folks are interested in how to do it.

4 Likes
#72

I haven’t seen SonoBus mentioned here yet but I’ve been experimenting with it. It’s very promising and offers a more user friendly experience than JackTrip but is in some ways takes more fiddling to get low-latency. I’ll likely write up a tutorial to get a SonoBus server working on Linux as well.

#73

@carltesta can put some numbers to “low latency”? Have you experimented with the effect of distance on latency?

One of the things I like about NINJAM is the ability to sync latency to a musical interval, but doing so suggests a certain cyclical style of composition. If I didn’t have ninjam’s ability to sync to the one, I might have to consider other adaptations to the effect of latency on the music (but I’m a bit hard pressed to imagine what that might look like).

Would love to hear your thoughts about the musical implications of network music techniques.