# Besides being great musicians can they actually record the rhythm tracks remotely in real time ?



## kgdrum (Jun 15, 2020)

Hi
This is a great piece of music from John McLaughlin and his 4th Dimension Band,I’m sure many of you will enjoy this.
They are all playing in their own separate locations,besides having quick broadband what kind of software or technology would enable a band to record remotely in real time this way? 
I realize the vocal is overdubbed but it sounds like otherwise they are playing live ,how are they able to do this?
Besides the fact that they’re great players I am astounded that this kind of collaboration is possible now with a fast broadband connection.
What software enables this to happen in real time,I’m totally blown away!

Thanks and enjoy 😉


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## zvenx (Jun 15, 2020)

I assume it wasn't recorded all at once but just edited to look that way.
rsp


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## kgdrum (Jun 15, 2020)

The vocals I agree(that’s obvious) but the playing? 
I’m not so sure about that,it sounds like they’re playing in real time to me.
I have a hard time thinking that they can play like that via overdubbing and editing.
Does anyone else know if there’s technology that makes this kind of collaboration possible?

Thanks


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## Zero&One (Jun 15, 2020)

Gary Barlow said in the C Henson stream that they record individually. The delay is too much.


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## kgdrum (Jun 15, 2020)

Zero&One said:


> Gary Barlow said in the C Henson stream that they record individually. The delay is too much.




Who’s Gary Barlow?
I have always thought there’d be too much delay,I guess I’m fantasizing that there’d possibly be technology that allows this,lol
If this actually could be dons live in real time it would certainly be a game changer.


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## rrichard63 (Jun 15, 2020)

Has anybody tried JamLink?



https://store.musicianlink.com/


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## NekujaK (Jun 15, 2020)

Some friends and I have played music over Zoom... sort of. It can be done if you're willing to accept some pretty severe compromises, such as not being able to hear each other 

We all play guitar and sing, so each of us takes turns singing a song, and everyone except the singer mutes their microphone. This enables us to play in time with the singer (who's also playing guitar), but of course, we can't hear each other.

Like I said, it's a severe compromise, but at least we get the overall sense of playing together, which is a welcome diversion in these days of isolation. The bigger issue is crappy audio due to laptop mics, laptop speakers, and internet bandwidth.

In terms of live broadcasting, I think all the ingredients are there to be able to extract a synced live feed from each of the players that can be merged into a single composite stream. But the details of that are way above my pay grade. I'm guessing that's how the Rolling Stones did their TV Zoom performance a couple of months ago. In that situation, it was probably a recorded drum track that was piped to all the players (Charlie Watts was clearly not actually playing drums, and I'm not exactly sure what Keith was doing, bless his heart).


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## rrichard63 (Jun 16, 2020)

NekujaK said:


> Some friends and I have played music over Zoom... sort of. It can be done if you're willing to accept some pretty severe compromises, such as not being able to hear each other
> 
> We all play guitar and sing, so each of us takes turns singing a song, and everyone except the singer mutes their microphone. This enables us to play in time with the singer (who's also playing guitar), but of course, we can't hear each other.
> 
> ...


My jam group is doing exactly this. I enjoy it, but it's as much a social event to keep the group together as it is a musical event.


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## kgdrum (Jun 16, 2020)

I guess on some level I all wish this kind of technology was feasible.
Some kind of combination of fast broadband and buffering algorithms to align everyone’s tracks it gave the illusion that people were playing together in real time.
I have to smoke less.......


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## zvenx (Jun 16, 2020)

Zero&One said:


> Gary Barlow said in the C Henson stream that they record individually. The delay is too much.


Exactly. The Laws of Physics are the laws of Physics.
rsp


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## Stringtree (Jun 16, 2020)

Radio transmission would be instantaneous. So if everyone could record to their own equipment, using the guide track from the "leader" they hear over the radio, everyone could keep perfect sync. 

But then, you'd need a license in a band that would suit the distances involved. Short distances? VHF/UHF, even low-power FM if you're really close, and that woudn't necessarily need a license. I have a gorgeous Drake transmitter with XLR stereo in. 

ISDN is 10ms latency. 

In ham radio, I can talk to the International Space Station, bounce signals off the moon, build my own transceivers and antennas, talk around the world, and use Morse code and digital modes. But I can't play music!

Boooo.


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## Stringtree (Jun 16, 2020)

Oh, this is cool:




Found at source-elements.com


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## kgdrum (Jun 16, 2020)

Wow! This looks potentially like a realistic approach towards remote recording. 
Unfortunately this is presently extremely expensive ,hopefully with some time this might become more affordable as well as be improved.
I’m hopeful that this will continue to be developed,for me this looks to be a real game changer.
Thanks for the information.

If anyone wants to check out the company: 


https://source-elements.com/products/source-connect



@Stringtree Thank You 😍


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## chrisr (Jun 16, 2020)

Stringtree said:


> Oh, this is cool:
> 
> 
> 
> ...




There is nothing new happening here - it's the way source connect has functioned for many years now.

The guy in Manchester _isn't_ performing anything live in that example. He's just hitting a button and waiting to receive a signal that's his session has been delay compensated to receive. 

Sorry to be a downer on the thread.

The good news is that (by my calculations) if computing latency could _massively_ reduce then one day, purely in terms of information transfer at the speed of light, it _might_ be possible to jam together at quite significant distances. Although I think mother nature probably would prefer we stick close together, hence the speed of sound.


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## Stringtree (Jun 16, 2020)

Good point, @chrisr. I first suggested radio, which is light, sorta. That would really be ideal. Then wondered about ISDN, but that's kind of out because even copper goes through delay-introducing devices these days. 

It was really my first look. No downer, just seems like something that has been around for a while and I don't know anything about it, this Source Connect. Shame about the crickets. Perfect for breaking any compression algorithm.

There's still a lot of real-world Internet latency, and this isn't any special witchcraft.

Meh. I see a squirrel and forget what I was doing.


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## mducharme (Jun 16, 2020)

There are solutions that allow this, although to my knowledge, nothing that does it in one box comprehensively.

The first step would be to get all of the remote computers to join a single network using something like ZeroTier, which uses the shortest path (lowest latency) between participants. Then you could use any kind of audio over ethernet solution to stream between participants. Anything designed for LAN audio streaming should work over ZeroTier.

We have experimented with this and as long as you are only sending a few audio channels, no video, and the streaming of uncompressed .WAV data does not max out your Internet connection, things are generally pretty good. ZeroTier does not add any noticeable latency or overhead, so the only latency you would experience would be from the audio-to-ethernet step (much less than the latency from compression that you would have in Zoom for instance). Obviously this wouldn't work very well if you tried to do a transatlantic session - the ping times between participants on the VPN would have to be low enough for everybody in order for this to be feasible. This also does not provide video. But for audio, it can actually be feasible to have low enough latency to allow live performances over the Internet using this type of solution (< 40ms).


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## rgames (Jun 16, 2020)

Latencies are still too high to make such a setup practical. Could you do it? Yes, but you'd waste too much of your concentration just trying to stay on the ever-moving beat and the performance would sound like crap.

It's not a bandwidth issue, it's a latency issue.



Stringtree said:


> Radio transmission would be instantaneous.


The laws of physics would strongly disagree.


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## mducharme (Jun 16, 2020)

rgames said:


> Latencies are still too high to make such a setup practical. Could you do it? Yes, but you'd waste too much of your concentration just trying to stay on the ever-moving beat and the performance would sound like crap.
> 
> It's not a bandwidth issue, it's a latency issue.



It depends on how much latency. I have about 10ms to my local university from my home. If I am not compressing the audio stream and getting additional latency from that, it is quite reasonable, and I think could be quite feasible for live performance. If everybody is in the same city and has good low latency connectivity to each other (~10ms), you can set up a ZeroTier VPN and do audio over ethernet using that.


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## Stringtree (Jun 17, 2020)

rgames said:


> The laws of physics would strongly disagree.



Radio is at the speed of light. Electromagnetic waves. Not sure what laws you mean.


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## kgdrum (Nov 22, 2020)

*update*
I stumbled on this and I think this is really interesting,it’s a solution that seems to make remote playing possible,it’s called: JACKTRIP
While this looks promising it seems a bit complicated to setup but WOW!

Here Christian McBride (1st call Jazz Bassist)talks about it:



more info:


https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~noune/Software_files/INSTALL.txt





https://jacktrip.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360053538614-Getting-Started-with-a-Virtual-Studio-Device



This looks pretty cool doesn’t it?


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