NINJAM is a ‘nearly realtime’ means of jamming online using synchronization based on a metronome or “click-track”. Jamming requires musicians to remain in tune and sync with each other, but latency of online audio can cause sound delays between online players throwing the mix out of sync for everyone.
The NINJAM platform attempts to address latency by delaying received audio in an online session until it can be synchronized with other players. The delay is based on the form and meter of the jam. Each player hears the others in a session and can play along with them but NINJAM defines the form by the number of beats to be recorded before syncing with other players. Ex: with an interval of 8, 2 bars of 4/4 would be recorded from each player, then played back to all other players.
Live, fast, loose, and out of control The High Latency Players: @cogdog, @timmmmyboy, @dlnorman, @noiseprofessor, and I got on the server Darcy set up and started messing about. There will most definitely be more NINJAM experiments in the future.
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Tuning and taking requests
[audio:http://web.unbc.ca/~gpotter/audio/DS106_Radio_Live_Jam_-_Noisefest.mp3]
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Noiseprofessor GuitarSession
[audio:http://web.unbc.ca/~gpotter/audio/noiseprofessor%20NINJAM%20guitarsession.mp3]
Cool! I didn’t know that it was actually working for me. That is, I didn’t know that my guitar was coming through at all, and in fact I just kept on jamming that loop trance for another 20 or 30 minutes because a) I was convinced it wasn’t working anyhow, and b) I completely spaced out and got into it. I eventually looked up, and realized the server (or at least the feed to ds106radio) was gone, everyone had bailed, and there was something entirely different going on! 🙂
This sounds like so much fun. I want in next time if I am around. If you had posted this on Soundcloud, others who weren’t there could download it and mess with it post production. Just sayin’
Sounds cool.
That was a blast. I’ll leave the Ninjam server running as much as possible. If you want in and it’s not up, DM me and I’ll light it up for you.
@Jabiz – the links above the players are the MP3s for download. The NINJAM client can archive all the tracks as .wavs on your machine during a session for post-jam mixdown and editing. Playing with the click-track takes a little getting used to and I found I had to monkey with the volumes of the other players in the mix in order to get a good balance of click track and players during the session. Interesting approach to addressing live, online audio latency for musicians.
Great post I must say. Simple but yet interesting. Wonderful work!