julietgreen

My last WorldJam live gig was a version of 'Dark Eyes' with a singer in Russia and a violinist in USA. Myself and the two guitars were in the UK. Live. Admittedly the first two haved learned to deal with latencies of up to 150ms, but for those of us in the UK, they're usually somewhere between 20 - 50.

This. Without a doubt. It's been impressive.

Some people get lower latencies, but they're rare. A lot of people seem to operate without too much effort at around 40ms, so with 30 you're fine and you'll hardly notice it. My most recently jam was with someone in Minnesota and someone in St Petersburg with a few of us in the middle in the UK. That's not common - most people can't deal with those latencies, but the American guy is a master at it and the Russian is used to it now! I'll post the video when we've played our online gig.

You just know Johann Sebastian would appreciate those rock basslines. He invented a lot of them.

Thanks for that lesson. It was really helpful!

I've been playing quite a bit since lockdown. Not with any of my normal live bands, but on Jamulus with a bunch of new people I wouldn't have met otherwise. It's pretty doable. Here's one we did earlier with me making my debut on double bass (apologies to all the db players out there - I will learn it properly, I promise). I've also done eb and sax . That session included the violinist from the states - playing with 150+ latency. You can hear a bit of burbling and we're constantly trying to improve sound quality and latency. But for live rehearsal and working up new stuff and trying all the things you've ever wanted to do, it's great. I'd never get that opportunity with my real life bands. https://youtu.be/tlGfu1dG_2c?t=1992 Remember - this is live. No pre-recording and editing.

Hi Zoltan. I think I might have exchanged a couple of emails with you once and done a few of your free online lessons. I am so inclined - I'll get in touch.

A couple of pubs near me seem to have started live music again. One of them is theoretically 'outdoors' but it's a very enclosed kind of outdoors with brass players only a few feet from each other and everyone else and audience still at close quarters. The other one is indoors in a situation indistiguishable from pre-covid settings but without brass so far, I think. My threshold is still <100 new cases a day. Then I'll go back out relatively happily.

Agreed. You should try to hear the return signal if you can. The brain compensates for latencies after a while. The trick is to hang into the drummer. Even when I play sax, I try to turn up the return to drown out the live sound. I don't use the 'solo' button any more because I've been caught out in a live jam with people entering the room who I'd previously put on solo. It cuts out all the other feeds and everything goes silent. Now you can set new entrants to the room to come in at 0% or something which won't deafen you. Most recently I've played with a violinist in the states. He was using electric violin and managed to totally compensate for 140ms+ latency!

Yep. It's getting better and better all the time with each update. A gift of a piece of software that isn't widely appreciated. I can see how it can become very useful for pre rehearsal rehearsals. Thrash it out on jamulus so that everyone knows the form etc. and then when it's more or less sorted, get together for the full rehearsal. Would save on fuel, time, studio fees etc. (when we eventually get back to in-person rehearsals)

Thanks. That's what I thought. There are some gs in there too.

Can anyone help me out with the basics of what the bassist is doing on this (not the pedal but the rest). Band have given me chords that don't seem to fit. Is that an F motif to start or a C? Am I hearing the kettle drum instead of bass? I'm not great at extracting basslines and I bet some of you are excellent at it. (Yes, I know, practise etc. etc.).

Quite

We could. If we pursued an elimination strategy as recommended by the Independent Sage group and as some countries have done. But that would require people not going to gigs now.

And calling it in the wrong key because they think an A-7 chord at the start means it's in A-!

Nope. It's very different in my mind because the sax can noodle wherever. If I play a 'bum' note, it's quickly resolved into something less bum. But I feel the bass player needs to lay down the correct chords for the rest of the band. From the answers in this thread, it seems that it's something that comes with practice playing with and to other musicians without having the sheets available. I need to just work up the nerve.

I have great admiration for rhythm section musicians who can jam. As a sax player, I can usually join in because it's melody and improvisation and I can hear the tonality but the actual chords are not crucial. I don't have the nerve to do that as a bassist. How do you do it? Have you played so much you know the repertoire? Do you know standard chord sequences? Do you hear the chords when you hear a piece of music? Are you really clever? All of the above? Obviously, I can do it with things like the blues, but otherwise, do I just have a lot of homework to do?

I've told mine the criterion. I've said when the official new infection figure (and that is just the tip of the iceberg) is <100. That's it. They can't hassle. Current official new infection number is hovering around 500 - 600 and not going down. Today masks were mandated, which is a good thing because otherwise the projection looks like this https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-kingdom

So much good sense on this thread. I think bass players should be in government.

Jamulus is a reasonable way to continue to interact with fellow musicians and actually broaden the network. I've been using it to play with the jazz band that I had recently joined just before Covid-19. It's kept some of us going - learning new stuff, even. Last week, I had a jam on sax, blowing through some standards with a bunch of complete strangers and we all said we would do that again this week. A couple of us (kb and sax) started it off in a 'room' and when other people saw that there was something going on, they joined us so that we ended up with a full band. Delay and sound quality issues could put some people off. I found on occasions, playing busier riffs, that the sound coming back to my ears late made it almost impossible. The drummer in our jazz band doesn't listen to himself through the system, for this reason, though that is not advised. I've noticed that he tends to slow down through a number, because we're coming through late in his ears. Apparently the brain does eventually adjust as long as the delay isn't too high. My set-up operates at between 40 - 50ms which isn't great but it's not terrible. 20ms is good. If you lower the buffer size, you get a lower delay, but the sound quality goes, so it's a juggling act. Every week, there's a group who hold an online streamed 'WorldJam' which is often excellent and involves random musicians from all over. I joined last week briefly on sax and again this week. Because they had technical hitches this week, they were pushed for time and didn't talk to each of the jammers. That's why I was called by the wrong name and missed the start of my solo and also why I hadn't noticed I had my 'mute myself' box checked and therefore couldn't be heard anyway! What an idiot! Still, I noticed that the eminent professors in the iSage conference kept forgetting to turn on their mics, so I'm not alone. It's worth a try if you're missing playing with others. There is a preponderance of bassists, apparently. I wonder why that is.

Are they fit to show us yet?

😂Is there a thread called 'bass guitars I have owned'?

Well lockdown has forced me to play my first bass solos - jamming on Jamulus and not having enough soloists to give the keyboard player a break. Hilarious but no pressure. It made me think of the other first times for bass, like the first ever gig. I'd been playing a couple of months when Chris Gibbons (guitar) told me I was going to play with him at a charity gig. Parts of it were ok! I described my first ever sit in on a jazz gig not so long ago. That was kind of breakthrough. One day I'll do my first gig on the DB! That one might be a good while in the future. What about you?

This on the request of the guitarist who is doing jamulus with us this pm.

No but found myself going the wrong way up the motorway when my phone satnav died. No junctions for long enough for me to start panicking. I was glad I'd left early.