Why Online Jamming Can Work for Your Band
If you’re in a band, you know the burden of coordinating regular practice sessions; with crazy schedules, rising expenses, and ever-increasing commutes, getting a group of musicians together is not as easy as it used to be. Fortunately, new tech and increasing internet capabilities are opening the door to bona fide remote music collaboration, i.e., rehearsing online.
Lutefish creates online audio streams between musicians that are so responsive, players can rehearse and perform together in real-time over the internet and feel like they’re playing together in the same room. In fact, Lutefish sessions can be so seamless that it’s common for musicians to forget the whole thing is happening online. Skeptical? Check out this video of Stevie Wonder using Lutefish to sing one of his hits with a remote band that’s miles away.
Lutefish uses a combination of dedicated hardware and a browser-based app to connect musicians up to 500 miles away. As a self-contained ecosystem, the platform is fundamentally designed to prioritize fast, stable, and high-quality audio over the web.
How Lutefish makes it possible
The main adversary of remote music collaboration is latency, which is a delay caused by the time it takes an internet signal to travel from one place to another. Internet signals travel extremely fast, but they’re not instant, and often the delay is enough to throw a musician out of time. Fortunately, internet technology has improved dramatically over the last decade, and now averages latency levels of cable and fiber ISPs are low enough to facilitate real-time music collaboration when utilizing tools like Lutefish.
The Lutefish hardware connects directly to your router via Ethernet cable, eliminating Wi-Fi latency and any additional processing latency brought on by a computer and software like a DAW (digital audio workstation). The whole point of the Lutefish Stream hardware is to create a fast lane for your audio straight to the internet.
Unlike audio interfaces, recording software, and conferencing platforms, Lutefish’s hardware and platform are purpose-built for real-time online jamming, featuring an operating system on the device and software tailored to prioritize audio speed above all else. For example, while Lutefish transmits a video feed, if the video transmission introduces any lag, Lutefish will automatically prioritize the audio signal above the video signal, keeping sessions feeling tight. The Lutefish platform is full of these types of design choices, and it’s one of the reasons we prefer to have our service run in a self-contained tech ecosystem, as it allows us to change fundamental elements that have a big impact on our community’s experience.
Lutefish achieves latency levels below 30ms, which is equivalent to playing with a musician about 30 feet away on a stage. That’s how Lutefish creates online jams that feel like everyone is playing in the same space, despite the musicians being potentially hundreds of miles apart.
Recap: How Lutefish cuts down on latency
· Purpose-built hardware
· Direct connection to the router
· Software and an operating system that prioritize audio
· Efficient, flexible, and fast self-contained tech ecosystem
Oh, and Lutefish isn’t just fast, it delivers studio-quality sound with class-A preamps on the device and 48k audio over the platform.
How you use Lutefish
The first priority for the Lutefish team was making online jams feel fast and responsive, but a close second was making the process easy. Lutefish is designed as a straightforward, plug-and-play experience that works with any setup.
Step 1: Connect the Lutefish device to your router via Ethernet cable.
Step 2: Connect your instruments/mics to the audio inputs on the device.
Lutefish Requirements
Every musician needs:
o Comes with 2 audio inputs
o Connects to the router
o Log in, schedule jams, and join sessions via the browser app at Lutefish.com
- Cable or fiber internet
o Cable or fiber is required for low-latency
o You don’t need a fast (high-bandwidth) internet plan, most basic cable and fiber internet plans are sufficient.
- Be within 500 miles of all musicians in a session
o Customers have had successful sessions at further distances, but we recommend staying within 500 miles of all session players for the best experience.
Wait.. I like jamming and practicing in person.
So do we! The entire Lutefish team is made up of musicians who totally understand the unrivaled experience of playing with a group in the same space. We didn’t make Lutefish to replace that experience.
What Lutefish does is bring cancelled practice sessions back from the dead. It opens the door to new sessions that wouldn’t be practical otherwise. Have time for practice, but not for practice + the commute? Have a band member who lives too far? Need 20 minutes here or there to go over a song part? Lutefish gives you more time for your music and lets you reserve the in-person meetings for the bits that really count.
This isn’t to say you can’t go full remote for your practice sessions. Some groups don’t have a choice. In fact, bands have successfully added and trained new band members 100% on Lutefish. Early adopters, Trip to the Morgue, added a new guitarist who lived hundreds of miles away, all on Lutefish. The first time they played together in the same space was at their first live show with the new guy, and the gig was a complete success.
Lutefish is a powerful tool for bands to cope and stay successful despite crazy schedules, impossible commutes, and rising costs. It fits in your band’s workflow, however you need it to.