(MMOTIRT = Making Music Online Together In Real Time)
tl;dr: A joyful musical reunion, technical challenges, and many lessons learned
Yesterday I hosted my first over-the-internet string quartet with friends in Idaho, Oregon, and California. Several of us had not played our instruments in months and most had not played music with anyone else since February or March, 2020.
It was very emotional for us just to see and hear each other. Musicians live to play with each other and for an audience, and we haven’t been able to do that in at least 10 months. Jamkazam offers us the possibility of doing both, and we were eager to give it a try.
We had a lot of fun, and we learned a lot from this session:
- Test your own configuration thoroughly to improve sound quality and remove noise
- Know how to host private vs. public jam sessions
- Know how to reconnect if you get dropped or Jamkazam quits
- Thoroughly test and adjust session sound levels
- The Jamkazam metronome
- Video and recording can cause issues
Three of us had had one or two very brief Jamkazam sessions before, but none had attempted a jam session with this many folks at the same time. Here is a summary of our members’ location, equipment and network latencies:
| Instrument | Location | Microphone | Latency |
| Violin | Idaho | Yeti Blue | 7.8ms |
| Violin | Oregon | Schure with Yamaha AG06 mixer | 8.4ms |
| Viola | California | Yeti Blue | 10.8ms |
| Cello | Oregon | Yeti Blue | 10.6ms |
1. Sound issues
At the very start, our violist reported hearing a slight echo on her own end. This was distracting and made it very difficult for us to play in time together.
As musicians, we are so used to using our ears to help us stay together that any latency or echo can really throw us off.
She experimented with plugging her headphones into her Yeti mic versus directly into her laptop. That change seemed to help.
Any changes to your mic and headphone setup requires you to leave your active session and reconfigure your audio gear. Then you have to be able to re-join the session (see 3 below).
Additionally, I was hearing some static and distortion over my headphones and sometimes when I was speaking or playing. The others could sometimes hear the static on their end.
Turning off my mic instantly cleared much of the noise for my friends. I need to look into my wiring and configuration to remove any sources of static and distortion.
A good idea is for each person to take turns turning off their mic. When they do, the others can listen to see if any background noise including hum or static goes away (Yeti Blue microphones have a mute button on their front which makes this easy to test). If so, the muted person has some homework to do to reduce and eliminate noise.
At one point when we were playing, we all heard a repeating note loud enough to distract us. It turned out it was my cell phone. It was on vibrate, and the alarm’s vibrations were transmitted from my desk up through the mic stand to my mic. So I will a) silence my phone, b) not place it on my desk, and c) reconfigure my mic stand.
Lesson 1: Thoroughly test your audio setup with a friend to minimize latency and optimize your sound quality.
2. Different types of sessions in Jamkazam
During our time together, we started with a Quick Start Friends session, which I’ve described in Part 4 of this series.
However, when we encountered some issues where people got disconnected, I decided to try a “Scheduled Future” session. That worked, but it apparently made our jam session public, because a random electric guitarist briefly joined us.
Although there is some documentation on the differences between the various Jamkazam sessions, the link to more detailed information on “Schedule Future” is sadly empty.
Lesson 2: I recommend only using Quick Start Friends for now
3. Reconnecting to a session
There were a couple times we had to reconnect to the session.
When trying to record inside Jamkazam, my application completely quit. Another time, our violist was testing changing her audio gear setup, which required her to leave our session.
For these reasons, know how to rejoin a session. It’s actually pretty easy:
a. From the Jamkazam home screen, click Find Session, and the Find a Session window will appear. In the lower half of the screen, you will see Sessions for Me. Your active session with your friends should be listed
b. Click the Join or Rejoin button to the right to get reconnected
4. Thoroughly test and adjust session sound levels
Even if everyone diligently goes follows #1 above to reduce extraneous noise and optimize their own sound, in the group you may have to make adjustments so you can hear everyone. No one should be too soft to hear or too loud that they overpower everyone else.
If someone is too loud or too soft, their level can be adjusted either at their end or everyone else’s.
For example, three of us were using Yeti Blue microphones. This microphone has a gain dial on the back which can be turned up or down to adjust its sensitivity.
I was not using a Yeti Blue mic, but my Yamaha AG06 mixer has a gain dial for my mic that accomplishes the same task.
Alternatively, in the Jamkazam session screen, you can adjust the level of each player. This will only impact what you hear, not what the others hear.
a. Go to the Jamkazam session screen. If you have video running, you will need to minimize or move it to the side.
b. Locate the musician from the session screen whose sound level you want to adjust
c. Click the speaker icon and a vertical volume level slider will appear.
d. Adjust the slider up or down to make that musician’s sound level more in line with the group
5. The Jamkazam Metronome
I was unfamiliar with this feature, and we tried it during our session. It helped a little bit in keeping us together, but there are far more features to the Jamkazam metronome which I learned this morning watching this video:
In short, the metronome can not only help you stay together, but it will give you an audio representation of how much latency there is across the group!
I definitely will be using the Jamkazam metronome in the future both to test latency and to improve our ability to play together.
6. Video and recording can cause issues
During our jam session, we naturally wanted to see each other.
On the Session screen, simply click Video in the top center, and a pop-up window will show you and everyone in your jam session.
We did have some issues where one person’s video just would not come up. We tried having her disconnect and reconnect, and finally gave up.
Also, people with Gold level accounts (your first month on Jamkazam gives you free Gold level access) have the option to record the Jamkazam session:
a. click Record
b. choose whether you want to record audio only, or audio and video
c. choose whether you want to record your own webcam only, or the session
Naturally we wanted to record everything. However, we noticed sound quality quickly deteriorated – if we even were able to get that feature to work. I suspect the computing demand to both run the jam session and record pushed the boundaries of my MacBook Pro’s capabilities.
Lesson: Video and Recording may degrade your session. For best sound and reduced latency, you might not want to try to record everything unless you have an especially powerful computer. Also, consider disabling video altogether.
Summary: It was so much fun and very emotional for us to be able to play together. However, many moments felt and sounded like a junior high orchestra – pretty loosy-goosey and mediocre in terms of sound quality.
Patience is required since network hiccups, sudden computer crashes, and other technical issues may arise and need to be addressed. However, the joy of playing together far outweighed the struggles we initially encountered.
The last piece we played was a string quartet arrangement by Joel Jacklich of the ethereal Miserere by Allegri. Since it is very slow, latency issues were rendered almost moot.
For those unfamiliar with this sacred choral work, may I recommend this Tallis Scholars video – and read wiki the incredible story of 14 y.o. Mozart’s transcribing it from from memory after one hearing.
I know this is a very long post, and those who are hesitant to give it a try may be further intimidated by reading the trials my friends and I are going through. However, I do encourage anyone with even a little interest in signing up and trying. The more people we have online, the quicker we can collectively overcome these obstacles and arrive at the place where we can easily find people with whom to joyously jam!
I will continue my testing and troubleshooting and am committed to making this smoother and easier for everyone.
Friends, please contact me if you are interested in trying this out!
Blatant Calm 