[linux-audio-user] Re: Net jamming

Shayne, Wolfgang- It's good to hear that you two are interested in Net jamming. I read your ideas and I think we have a good starting point. Let's have a look- . I like the idea of having different rooms for sharing loops. And I also like the idea of previewing. Wolfgang seems to be coming at this more from the audio sync point of view, while Shayne addressed the ways in which loops could be shared. My take on this is that we can allow several users to connect together to form a session, or room. A room is populated by users, and also loops. The users have both live audio (inputs and outputs) and possibly their own library of loops. When we enter a room, we are able to preview the live audio of different users to hear what they are doing. I don't see having a single audio stream from a room that everyone jams in. Wolfgang was mentioning syncronization, and I agree that it would be difficult to syncronize all those clients. So I would suggest turning the problem on its head-- why not let each user develop his own improvisation using the loops of the other users. So the session can go in several directions at once. As Shayne grabs a new loop from his guitar, it appears on Wolfgang's screen. Playing the loop, Wolfgang is inspired and grabs something else to add another layer. Meanwhile, Mercury is listening to Wolfgang's mix and decides to improvise a break. He cuts out several of Wolfgang's loops, adds some thinner break loops of his own. He does this in his own mix, so it doesn't affect the others. Shayne and Wolfgang finish their loopy dialog and see that Mercury has gone off on a tangent-- so they grab what Mercury is doing and it becomes a break in their own improvisations. In this way, I see a session as being a kind of quantum field of musical possibilities. Different users contribute new loops as they are inspired. We can peer into another user's sound, but we can also work on our own. Besides loops, we can share live audio, but we will always be hearing it with some latency. Perhaps we can choose whether we want the lowest possible latency, or to quantize to the next beat. Wolfgang mentioned bandwidth. I agree that's an issue. I think good results could be achieved with different codecs, OGG springs to mind. Good quality OGGs of loops could be shared quite quickly. And if this works, we could allow rooms to persist, so that a server stores the loops and 'scenes' (collections of playing loops and settings), allowing others to connect later and add to the palette. It sounds like both of you would be into testing such a system. If you have more design ideas, please let me know. And while this won't save the world, I do think that there is a lot of potential for a unique type of collaborative music making here. And I do think there are social implications whenever we change the way music is made. Peace, Mercury ps Nothing will ever replace two hands touching, two faces looking at each other, two birds singing in the wilderness