Any online Gypsy Jazz hangouts?

Gojdan

I'm in a small town in Canada, so no Gypsy Jazz around here :)

Are there any online Gypsy Jazz hangouts happening that I can attend ?

Buco

@Azazzell has been posting info about similar stuff. Either look up his previous threads or maybe he'll chime in here.

Azazzell

Hi @Buco. Yeah, we've tried quite a couple of online things for the Edmonton+Calgary area in Canada.

Ninjam, Jamkazam, Jamulus, Zoom, Discord, Facebook Rooms, Bandlab, Jamtaba, JackTrip, Beatconnect... see the Online Collaboration section on https://djangojazzcalgary.wordpress.com/resources/. Unfortunately none of these worked out, and we never got more than 3-4 people interested.

I think part of it is the technical difficulty of setting these programs up. But the main issue is that making recordings over the internet or having Zoom open mics just doesn't seem to be fun. Especially with people being at different skill levels.

So I think we're out of luck for online fun until somebody brings internet latency to <10ms (which might involve circumventing the speed of light) 😀

Buco

Ok @Azazzell so you've waded quite a lot into all the programs that promise live internet jams. How is it that Jamkazam was holding at least one complete festival that I saw with several bands playing live successfully? They can't all be tech wizards and have the latest greatest equipment. I don't get what going on, what am I missing... I could never find anyone locally that was interested to try it and had basic requirements in place: hardwired internet and a decent interface.

Azazzell

Kinda depends what you mean by tech wizard. Skills that might seem basic to some, might seem magic to others 😀

In order to get Jamkazam/Jamulus working decently I think you need a group of people that:

1. Want to play together.
2. Live in the same city. You won't be able to get decent latency if you are 200km apart (speed of light+routing delays and all).
3. Can use an USB microphone or plug their guitar/mic in via an audio interface.
4. Can set up a low latency ASIO driver inputs and outputs. I think ASIO is not needed on Macs.
5. Can record into a DAW to test their gear, levels and sound.
6. Can connect their computer to their router via ethernet cable, and have decent down/up speeds.
7. Don't have silly ISPs. For example some Calgary ISPs route all traffic through Edmonton (300kms away) for some reason, so Jamkazam just won't work.
8. Know how to set up port forwarding.
9. Know how to switch routers, interfaces and cables. Jamkazam seems to struggle with some [older] equipment sometimes. There are lists of equipment that works.
10. Are willing to spend time troubleshooting and optimizing their setup for latency reduction. Maybe spend some money.
11. Are lucky and favoured by the latency gods.

My experience: 1 - is hard. 2 - is harder. 3 - drove out 80% of candidates. 4 - Made the rest pack up and leave after some trying 5-11 - unknown territory 

As for Jamkazam having several bands play successfully online, I'd say it's possible if they live close together. The necessary gear can be pretty basic (cheap USB mic or audio interface, ethernet cable). And they probably have a tech guy that went to everybody's house and set everything up 😀. Also probably works better in styles of music that are more forgiving when latency gets involved.

Buco

Great list man!

I tried with a guy that used USB mic, we didn't get anywhere. Then I read somewhere, either on JK site or just did int search that USB mics usually have high latency. Another guy I tried with had a hardwired internet but used a sound card built into his laptop, that didn't work either.

Gojdan

That's sad. Any other ideas on how to stay motivated in a small town with no chance of Gypsy Jazz events, and little chance of flying to international events ?

Lango-Django

What small town in Canada are you in, Gojdan?

Will

Niagara-On-The-Lake, ON