Has anyone here setup and or done online band rehearsal?

S

SVOhio

Member
I was curious if anyone here has setup or does online band rehearsals?

I believe in rehearsing together. We have a couple members that live a hour away. Sometimes it would be convenient if we could occasionally rehearse online if someone needs to be home with kids, sick but could practice, live far and could alternate etc. There are many good reasons on occasion.

It sounds possible if members live local or within a couple states, have cable internet, and a couple good interfaces and an Online rehearsal app.

Again, curious anyone's thoughts/experience. Here's an article:


https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/online-band-practices-possible/
 
The reality of the scenario is the internet is inconsistent, latency alone (delay in getting the data) could potentially be overcome, but there is also jitter involved (packets arriving at uneven intervals) which is a much bigger problem and is not covered by the article you've linked.

To overcome the potential jitter/latency conferencing/callings apps like Zoom and Microsoft Teams use a dynamic buffer that delays the audio/vide by some portion of time before it plays it to you, and then the hope is the connection is consistent enough that it never has to increase the default delay and it has time to adjust packets that arrive slightly behind schedule. You cannot overcome jitter and latency in a way that would allow a consistent experience for multiple people to play together without dedicated direct connectivity or set quality of service and service levels. You don't get that type of performance from a standard internet connection, so you can play stuff for each other yes, but playing together will be a really rocky experience at best. Even corporate WAN systems that would have guaranteed QoS and SLAs wouldn't work well enough to make that a good experience. But you could always sign in to Zoom or Teams with a free account and see how close you can get.
 
SVOhio said:
I was curious if anyone here has setup or does online band rehearsals?

I believe in rehearsing together. We have a couple members that live a hour away. Sometimes it would be convenient if we could occasionally rehearse online if someone needs to be home with kids, sick but could practice, live far and could alternate etc. There are many good reasons on occasion.

It sounds possible if members live local or within a couple states, have cable internet, and a couple good interfaces and an Online rehearsal app.

Again, curious anyone's thoughts/experience. Here's an article:


https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/online-band-practices-possible/
Click to expand...

It might be hard to translate somebody else‘s experience. There are so many variables that could make it work for somebody else, but not for you, or vice versa. Your best bet is to try one or more of the online musical collaboration services, like jamkazam or elk, and see for yourself.
 
As an alternative approach, you could consider making some multitrack recordings of some practices when all are present, and then bouncing out some recordings with selected parts muted so the members with difficulty attending in person can at least have something to practice with at home. Though it doesn't take the place of the f2f interactions and would be limited to the repertoire that's already cooked, it's nevertheless great for practicing for a forthcoming gig.
 
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