virtual rehearsal room
‘DE BRIDGE’ CAN CONTINUE REHEARSING!
The test was successful. The virtual rehearsal room for ‘DE BRIDGE’ is a fact. Playing simultaneously – together apart, thus ‘online’ – everyone said it wouldn’t be doable. But we had no option. In order to be able to make music together under the current conditions, a solution had to be found. Some of our band members have a progressive muscle disease, so unfortunately they are in quarantine for the time being.
On the internet we saw several slick videos of entire orchestras playing ‘together’. What they don’t state is that all these parts have been recorded separately to be merged later using a computer program. That, of course, is not ‘playing together’ and maybe fun for a one off. No, we just want to play live at the same time. As a band, together in our virtual rehearsal studio. And we will!
What would you need?
We make use of the opensource software Jamulus(*). All band members connect via the internet. Simply at home via an ethernet or UTP cable. WiFi is not (yet?) suitable for this type of application. We don’t use video/image yet, just audio/sound and that sound is surprisingly good. There’s an extra challenge to make all equipment accessible to our band members. When suffering from Duchenne or SMA there are also physical limitations. Some band members need help getting their stuff ready. A majority part of the start-up is one-off. Below are the basics to get started.
- a reasonably good computer/laptop. Windows, MAC & Linux will do.
- Jamulus(*) software.
- a stable internet connection, where ‘upload-‘ is just as important as ‘download-‘ speed.
- an ethernet- or ‘UTP-‘ cable.
- a good external sound card, also known as ‘audio interface’.
- a good pair of headphones. When you have and tolerate in-ears, that is fine as well.
- a microphone for chatting.
- good instruments, preferably ‘active’ or electronic/digital.
- for singers a good microphone. (which doubles up for chatting)
(*) Also with online music making there is of course more than one player, and developments follow each other in rapid succession. We try to stay informed and have embraced ‘JamKazam’ since adding this page. This may seem like more of a challenge at first, but the benefits are decisive at the moment. The sound quality is even better and this client has a video function built in, which makes teaching and following lessons a lot more pleasant. Besides a different piece of software, the above list remains current.
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