I don’t often get the Sunday Blues. But, this Labor Day evening? Serious Monday Blues. Something about the cooler weather and a premonition that this week was going to be a shit show on several fronts reminded me of the dread I always felt the evening before the first day of school. Though, as with school, this week wasn’t all that bad.
The highlight of the week (it’s good to have low expectations sometimes): I finally figured out how to run two Jamulus clients on my Mac. Hundreds of others have managed to do this without much effort, but it was a challenge for me. We tested the new setup on a Thursday jam–thumbs up all around. There’s a step-by-step guide here: How To Run Multiple Jamulus Clients on a Mac. I wrote it mostly for one of my fellow jam mates; why not put it out there for others?
Running separate Jamulus clients on a Macintosh is relatively straightforward. In spite of that, I had a hard time getting it all to work, especially the audio routing. The howtos I found were great, but for Windows or included a Digital Audio Workstation in the signal chain. I just needed to send two channels from my audio interface to the Jamulus server separately. After a couple false starts, and one really complicated setup, I landed on a quick and easy setup that works well.
Why would you even want to do this? Great, question! Initially, I want to separate vocals from the instruments while recording. However, it’s great having them separated when just playing. When each instrument is in a separate stream, everyone can better adjust the volume and stereo placement of everything in their personal mix–something you can’t do if vocals and an instrument are combined in one stream.
A step by step guide, complete with screenshots appears below. I hope it saves at least one person some headaches. Enjoy!
I spent some time futzing around with Observable Plot this week. While I didn’t get very far on what I wanted to do, I managed to clean up a (simple) chart I use all the time. Perhaps a tutorial is in order for me.
Months ago, a good friend asked how our jam sessions sound. I sent him a recording from January. Feedback was neither solicited or received. However, when I didn’t even get a “I listened to it…” I just assumed we sucked even worse than I thought and forgot about it.
Fast forward to this week: I don’t remember how it came up, but he said “Hey, I listen to that recording of you guys all the time.” He mentioned a couple songs that he thought “really rocked”. Yes, I think he’s being at least somewhat generous, and no he doesn’t seem to have suffered from any hearing loss recently.
That interaction inspired me to record this week’s jam session to see if there’s been any improvement. We’ve added another guitarist and a couple new songs since the first recording. After listening through everything, I have some notes on what I need to work on. We still sound rough, but we are improving.
This meant I spent some quality time mixing this weekend–something I know almost nothing about. But, I’m learning and getting more comfortable using the Reaper Digital Audio Workstation–totally worth the $60 for a personal license, by the way. I also took some notes on how we might be able to improve our recording via Jamulus next time around. Among other things, separating the vocal and instrument tracks will make for a better mix.
Here’s one sample track from the session. I have a lot of work to do when it comes to singing backup and playing even a simple bass part. Much respect for for those who make it look easy (Mike Mills, Sting just to name two).
Heroes (David Bowie cover) recorded from a Jamulus session on 31 Aug, 2024.
The political craziness continued this week. I took this screenshot shortly after Biden announced the end of his reelection campaign. When I first saw it, I thought there was no way anyone could defeat Trump, not this late in the game. However, Harris seized the moment and really energized people–amazing.
Meanwhile, the former president essentially told people he’d ensure the next election is the last one people will need to vote in. Yes, the stakes are high this year, please be informed and vote in November.
In lighter news, I did a volunteer project at Wetlab in the Hudson River Park. It’s a cool place that’s doing good work. They are open to the public several days a week. I recommend stopping by to learn more about the wildlife in our waterways.
On two separate video calls at work, I received comments on the Gibson t-shirt I was wearing. Of course, they were musicians and we chatted about what we played etc. One of these guys was a pro (before he decided he wanted health insurance). I was surprised that he never heard of Jamulus. I then proceeded extol the virtues of it–always be evangelizing.
We went to Academy Records and Kalustyan’s this weekend. Both are amazing and examples of great New York City stores. One could get lost in either for hours.
NYC’s first gun-detector scanner comes to Fulton Street station I agree with the NYCLU’s staff attorney on this one: “Slowing down the subway with error-prone scanners and flooding our subways with cops is mere security theater that turns every New Yorker into a suspect and takes resources away from supportive services that will help keep crime at low rates like more housing, mental health, and employment services,”
A lot of crazy shit happened this week, I don’t feel the need to rehash or react to any of it here. I’ll say only this: Americans, please make sure you’re registered to vote and understand what is at stake in the upcoming elections. Then, of course, vote!
On a lighter note, after last weeks live jam, we were back to using Jamulus this week. Last weekend’s “intensive” seems to have improved my playing ability just a bit. Things felt and sounded a bit smoother this Friday.
In other music news, I discovered that we have a drummer in the family! Honestly, they didn’t seem all that interested in joining our jam, but they have a kit at home and live well within Jamulus range to the rest of us. I’ll turn on the charm and see if I can recruit him.
