How do you manage live band practice remotely ?

  • Hello Kemper community,


    With the COVID-19 confinement, I was wondering what you guys do to manage live band practice remotely.


    The only solution I have found recently is to use JamKazam. Seems to work alright for what it is but I've just started using it.


    Of course, latency is the biggest issue but I guess it's better to be so-so rather than perfect in these times for remote live practice...


    My colleague and I will only play guitar and bass respectively. The rest being a backing track that includes drums and signing parts.


    Any thoughts and experience with something similar?


    Thank you and stay safe !

  • I tried jamkazam with 2 other musicians and it was alright, but not that satisfying for me.


    Now I'm just sending them recordings of my parts with a click intro. It's a pain, but I tend to practice more than them, so this lets them get things together without me having to play it 20 more times.

  • Our band has tried to rehearse with Jamkazam for the first time yesterday. It was not very satisfying. All members had various problems. At the end of the evening, our bassplayer and me (both with focusrite audio interfaces, a 2i2 3rd gen and a 6i8 3rd gen) were able to jam together. And we had a good sound without latency. Our singer (with a Steinberg interface) had problems because she heard a lot of cracks. And we only heard her singing in the left channel. Our other guitar player used his line6 Helix as an audio interface, but couldn't even get to play in our session. He was greyed out and the message we got was ´no audio from John'.


    We are going to try and fix the issues this week because, when it works Jamakazam is a really nice tool to rehearse in these times. I think it is a lot busier than normal on the Jamkazam servers so that also might be a reason we are encountering problems. Beside the fact that our singer and our other guitar player are no whizz kids :)

  • Theres “sofa session” and “jammr”. “Jammr appears in its infancy with no musical controls whereas “sofasession”, although the user experience seems much simpler and streamline, their server seems to struggle with user numbers. In my limited experience, these systems still rely on close-ish proximity, ie jamming with your mate 20 miles away may work but you should expect less than favourable latency when connecting across continents.


    While were on the subject, whats everyones preferred “live streaming” methods, for broadcasting?

  • the technology is pretty interesting with everything synced up by metronome.

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  • I tried jamkazam with 2 other musicians and it was alright, but not that satisfying for me.


    Now I'm just sending them recordings of my parts with a click intro. It's a pain, but I tend to practice more than them, so this lets them get things together without me having to play it 20 more times.

    WE always practice more than THEM :D

    PRS Custom 22's - Fender Strats - Diezel VH4 - Carol Ann OD2 - Toneking Imperial MK2 - Colin the Kemper - CLR Neo ii.

  • I downloaded it...and am going to try it today and if its any good - figure it out before getting it to the rest of the band.


    From looking at the map of active users...it looks like I am mostly going to be jamming with random people from the philippines today - which is exciting!

    PRS Custom 22's - Fender Strats - Diezel VH4 - Carol Ann OD2 - Toneking Imperial MK2 - Colin the Kemper - CLR Neo ii.

  • One hardware option that's apparently been around for a while is Jamlink. (looking into it for my band now) Downside, is that it requires everyone in the band to purchase the interface at 199.00ea, (I think it's slightly lower if you buy a few at a time). This interface connects directly to your network router via Ethernet cable on the rear. On the front, you connect your instrument and chat mic and headset. (I guess your could connect to speakers via the headset jack).


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    Musicianlink website for managing the sessions: https://musicianlink.com/

  • Jamtaba is ninjam based - so it's not real time. We're experimenting with JamKazam but there was significant latency from my singer. We're going to try again later this weekend.

    The very NATURE of the internet though means that there will ALWAYS be latency with virtual rehearsal. For example, where I am right now to the next nearest city - where my office is, actually - a 30 minute drive - has a round trip network latency of around 90-100ms. Well beyond what's comfortable for audio.

    Reducing this latency is the key here.


    KPA Unpowered Rack, Kemper Remote, Headrush FRFR108s, BC Rich Mockingbird(s), and a nasty attitude.

  • I'm trying to use this as an opportunity to get all my musician friends sorted with at least a basic recording set up (ideally with a video cam) so they can send me tracks. I've had some good results so far.

  • I am also planning on testing JamKazam this weekend. One of the things I am also concerned about is UDP packet loss and how the audio quality will diminish as a result

    Me too - but for the purposes of *rehearsing* audio quality isn't as big an issue as distracting, painful, pops and jumps. If I could thunk it down to 22khz or 32khz, I'd probably be fine with it. It doesn't have to go out at DAT quality all the time.

    I could just write my own, but I'm too lazy for that now. :)


    KPA Unpowered Rack, Kemper Remote, Headrush FRFR108s, BC Rich Mockingbird(s), and a nasty attitude.

  • The biggest issue I have with all this is trying to explain to everyone else in the band what they will need, how to use it all, how to set everything up etc.

    Just seems a lot more stress and hassle than it would potentially solve :(

  • My studio is based on Cubase and I know they have a remote vst thing, but I've never used it as I currently don't have a band.


    Anyone have any experience with it? I'd be curious to know how well it performs and feels. With these over the Internet things latency seems like the biggest challenge.

    Kemper remote -> Powered toaster -> Yamaha DXR-10