Hack66.Band Together with Skype


Hack 66. Band Together with Skype

Are your band members spread all over the world? No problem, you can practice and jam together online with Skype.

Works with: Windows version of Skype.

Jamming over the Internet by using Skype might not be your first choice for band practice, but if it's your only choice, it's worth a try. Here's how to do it.

Before even thinking about jamming using Skype, there are three things to consider:


Bandwidth

You can jam with up to four other band members by means of a conference call. But whoever hosts the conference call should have enough available bandwidth to support the conference call, which roughly scales with the number of participants. So, figure out who in your band has the best bandwidth and nominate that person as the host for the jam session. Use "Test Your Internet Connection Bandwidth" [Hack #33] to test your Internet connection bandwidth. Whoever is hosting the jam session should budget a minimum of 128 Kbps of bandwidth per session participant, uplink and downlink, and ideally have substantially more than this minimumsay, 256 Kbps per participant.


Latency

This is the real killer for online jamming. If the Skype Internet connection of one of your band members has a latency that's greater than 250 ms, tempo and synchronization will be difficult to maintain. Use "Test Your Internet Connection Latency" [Hack #34] to test your Internet connection latency.


Interfacing your musical instrument

At a minimum, you will probably need a Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI)-capable sound card, and more likely, you will need a full-featured music-mixing device (something like an M-Audio FireWire 410; see http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/FireWire410-main.html) for your PC to make your Skype jam sessions really rock! Of course, for nonelectronic instruments, you'll also need a microphone.

This last item is important because without it, you face two problems. You'll probably need a preamp to get the raw signal output from your electronic instrument into a form that is suitable to feed into your sound card, and you will need to mix multiple audio streamsat a minimum, your instrument and headsetand feed them into and out of Skype (select Skype Tools Options… Sound Devices). Both of these problems are neatly side-stepped by many music-mixing devices that typically interface to your computer through USB or FireWire and come with a whole host of musical instrument interfaces, audio mixing, and sound driver (software) features (see Figure 7-5).

Figure 7-5. Jamming together with Skype





Skype Hacks
Skype Hacks: Tips & Tools for Cheap, Fun, Innovative Phone Service
ISBN: 0596101899
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 168

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