Open Jams Online

Royal City Studios used to run open jams.  We started quite a while ago with the Open Rock Jam.  We ran an Open Student Jam too.  There was also an Acoustic Open Jam that was really fun.  We even jammed with Mayor Cam Guthrie when we first opened!  We miss open jams.  If you do too, that’s great because we set up an online Jamulus Server to bring us back together for the next few weeks while we wait until it’s safe for in-person jams to resume.

What’s a Jamulus Server?

Jamulus Logo

A Jamulus Server is like a website but is used for audio communication instead of browsing information.  Instead of receiving clicks and displaying content, it receives the audio you send and shares it with anyone else connected to the server.  It also sends you everyone else’s audio.  It does so very quickly, allowing you to play music together in almost real time, even though you are all in different physical locations.

How Do I Use Jamulus?

woman in red and black plaid dress shirt and blue denim jeans sitting on bed

Photo by Soundtrap on Unsplash

For starters, you will need to download and install the Jamulus client from jamulus.io.  It is also recommended that you have:

  • A fairly recent computer with enough memory (RAM)
  • A high-quality audio interface or USB microphone to plug in with (BONUS: Use one microphone for talking and another for your instrument!)
  • A good set of headphones

A full set of beginner instructions can be found here: https://jamulus.io/wiki/Getting-Started

This will help you get set up and running.  If you encounter issues, there is very helpful information on the Troubleshooting page.

Once you have yourself up and running, you can then connect to the “RCS -Jam1” server.  This is running on Amazon’s “Web Services” out of their data centre in Montreal.

Finally, you can check out our Open Jams page, to see what music we’ll be jamming on.

When Are the Open Jams?

For now, we’re going to run Open Jams on Sunday evenings.  Feel free to connect from 7-8pm to get help with your settings and see if everything is working.  The jam itself will start at 8pm and run until at least 10pm.

The first week, we will be going with Classic Rock to get things started.  Charts/Tabs will be loaded to our Open Jams page.

For future weeks, we’ll be adding a survey to the page so people can select a genre.  If there is enough interest for multiple genres, we can set up multiple servers.

We’ll also try to figure out when people want to jam in different genres, and maybe set up a page/section/survey for each.  This will allow us to expand and cater to many different musical styles as well as availability.