chordshout

[meatbits]

someone mentioned using a whiteboard, which got me thinking about communications during a jam, and about jams in ninjam.

ninjam seems to favor the "two-chord plod-along" family of jam, and i think that's because this result is kind of encouraged by the bar-latency feature. people will "lock on" to those chords in a few bars.

it's no criticism, just an observation: this propogates a samey-ness to the cord structures of many jams. this could be addressed:

i suggest something to emulate that feature of the real-time location-coherent jam: the time-honored tradition of shouting out an upcoming chord change.

this might be implemented as an admin feature. a segmented box appears above the clock progress bar in all running clients. the segments inside that box would correspond to / represent future bars coming up. these box segments would contain labels displaying chord notations and the segments should be colored to indicate their status: (green)playing now, (yellow)starting in 1 bar, (pink) starting in 4 bars.

so as not to have the admin unduly clicking, the chordshout input should be one-handed by implementing a right-click leading to a popup of chord choices. this way, the admin could quickly load up instructions to the "band" for future bars. as little as "shouting out" one or two new chords or dictating lots of the future by spelling out several changes.

it would also be important to be able to store and recall groupings of bars. it would be mind-blowing to lead various combinations of musicians through arrangements.

better still if this "shouter" role were hand-offable.

i'll shut up now



m

[lightman]

it would be good if every body in the jam had a mic so they could talk inbetween songs etc. insted of using chat

also file transfer would be a nice feature

[benbakelaar]

in my limited experience on ninjam, while i do think having posted chord progressions or something like that is great, what i would appreciate more is..

ROOMS. i realize this is a test application basically, but when im gettin into my groove and then i start hearing heavy metal death man playing pantera or whatever, it kinda ruins the mood. yes each individual user can mute every other individual user, but still..

i have no idea how to address this fairly or in any manner really, as far as inside the program. i guess the idea is that its much better to use with your friends... and perhaps use jambuddy.com to find similarly matched/minded musicians to jam with.

have you guys thought about joining up with jambuddy.com? if someone made that WEBAPP then holy crap, the possibilities are endless.

[monkeymakes]

I have played in bands for the past five years. I am brand new to ninjam and think it attracts good talent but i think it needs more structure. I play tenor and bari sax and would love to lkay down some funk beats with people. but as it is now, anyone can jump in and take over just when you get thing hopping!! Does anyone know where the more advanced,ADULT NINJAMMER GOES AND PLAYS??? maybe ill setup a server if you all will come and play with me??? We will agree on a key and a tempo and what parts go where. Instead of open season...

Originally Posted by meatbits

someone mentioned using a whiteboard, which got me thinking about communications during a jam, and about jams in ninjam.

ninjam seems to favor the "two-chord plod-along" family of jam, and i think that's because this result is kind of encouraged by the bar-latency feature. people will "lock on" to those chords in a few bars.

it's no criticism, just an observation: this propogates a samey-ness to the cord structures of many jams. this could be addressed:

i suggest something to emulate that feature of the real-time location-coherent jam: the time-honored tradition of shouting out an upcoming chord change.

this might be implemented as an admin feature. a segmented box appears above the clock progress bar in all running clients. the segments inside that box would correspond to / represent future bars coming up. these box segments would contain labels displaying chord notations and the segments should be colored to indicate their status: (green)playing now, (yellow)starting in 1 bar, (pink) starting in 4 bars.

so as not to have the admin unduly clicking, the chordshout input should be one-handed by implementing a right-click leading to a popup of chord choices. this way, the admin could quickly load up instructions to the "band" for future bars. as little as "shouting out" one or two new chords or dictating lots of the future by spelling out several changes.

it would also be important to be able to store and recall groupings of bars. it would be mind-blowing to lead various combinations of musicians through arrangements.

better still if this "shouter" role were hand-offable.

i'll shut up now

m

fffffff

[norelpref]

At times a NINJAM session reminds me of good old "open mic night" where everyone reads their own stuff or plays their own material and there's very little convergence or intentional synergy. Sometimes I like this, actually. You never know what's going to happen.

But as others have mentioned, a bit of structure couldn't hurt to perhaps up the overall musical quality of any given session. Chord sequence, BPM, genre, "mood", "attitude" might be considerations for a session. For this, to avoid the "open season" factor you'd have to create sequestered jam rooms with just a small group with similar aims.

So Death Metallers could get their own room, and funk/blues folks get theirs and so on....

[norelpref]

Originally Posted by benbakelaar

ROOMS. i realize this is a test application basically, but when im gettin into my groove and then i start hearing heavy metal death man playing pantera or whatever, it kinda ruins the mood. yes each individual user can mute every other individual user, but still..

i have no idea how to address this fairly or in any manner really, as far as inside the program. i guess the idea is that its much better to use with your friends... and perhaps use jambuddy.com to find similarly matched/minded musicians to jam with.

Last night I experienced the stereotypical ninjam hell: battle of the obnoxious guitars. Worse still: I participated. Upon joining the farm I on knee jerk response started wailing away myself. This gets old SO VERY FAST. There has to be a way to get everyone on "the same sheet of music," so to speak.

Once you exhaust your bag of E minor/major pentatonic tricks what then?

[Justin]

Originally Posted by norelpref

Last night I experienced the stereotypical ninjam hell: battle of the obnoxious guitars. Worse still: I participated. Upon joining the farm I on knee jerk response started wailing away myself. This gets old SO VERY FAST. There has to be a way to get everyone on "the same sheet of music," so to speak.

Once you exhaust your bag of E minor/major pentatonic tricks what then?

Like music in real life, it's all about finding people you are compatible with. When you find people who you are, it can be very enjoyable.. perhaps we should try setting up some times on a private server, or something... btw, I liked that song of yours that included samples from ninjam haha

-Justin

[dirmass]

I agree with the fact that we need to have some rooms, a degree of categorizing what people play.

At the moment there are 4 "Test" servers. How about naming them "Public" servers? and make each of them one category of genres or moods?

I think a very good way to imvolve more cooperation with NINJAM is to have some sort of a server indexing system. For example when you click File > Connect, there should be a window that lists all the servers people made and are public. Of course, with the server software there should be an option not to include the server in the list. I think this would take some pressure off the "Test" servers and will increase the number of servers. (in time of course :P)

There are so many other features that need to be put in NINJAM... I wish I could help :P

[Riggzy]

A way to communicate ideas for a chord structure is handy.

If I'm the only one playing backing on a server, i usually slip into a 12/16 bar blues, since the same scale fits with each progression, and it's a heck of a lot more interesting than E minor, A minor, E minor, A minor... zzzz...

Simple two chord progressions can work though - listen to "Hush" by Kula Shaker, or "Poor Boy" by Supertramp :P Not all of the song is the same two chords, but it's the only examples I could pick off the top of my head...

[harmono]

In a way I kind of like the limitation of not being able to make real structured music, because a) It forces you to be creative in other areas such as rhythm, tone, and other patterns. b) because it restricts the jam to a jam session. I've been to real so called jam sessions that ended up being cover tunes.

But it would be nice to be able to get out of the mono chord mode.

I don't think it's quite possible to call out chords, or have a pre-planned set of chords to play. Typically in a jam, you start out with a blues improvisation, and it's usually in E or A. You can't do this really with ninjam, but you can get creative and play in a blues style that has hints of the other chords.

You can't do this, because the way ninjam works everyone gets to hear what you play. So by design, everyone is listening to something someone already played. Am I not right? It's a mind expanding concept to think about, but let's see if I can explain it.

You have some players logged in. For example guitar, bass, drums, and flute.

Everyone has been playing in one chord for awhile, but the guitar player has a microphone and calls a chord. The start of the next bar is where the chord change should take place.
Let's look at what's happening just when the guitarist calls the next chord (not when they play the chord).

Everyone is in a queue, because nobody can play simultaneously. So Ninjam is ingeniously designed to make it sound like a live jam, but it's not true live.

Here's the queue:
1. Guitarist.
2. Flute
3. Bass.
4. Drums.

Let's start jamming:
I don't fully understand how Ninjam works, but I think it works this way. It makes the most sense to have it work this way, because it's the closest to real time that you can get.

Bar One
Guitar starts playing. The recording for bar one only has guitar.

Bar two:
The guitarist now hears what the flute player played in bar one! But now he's recording new guitar over what the flute player just played while the flute player was listening to Bar One.

Bar three:
Now the guitarist hears the flute playing from bar two, and the bass player from bar one!

Bar four:

Now the guitarist hears the first bar of the drummer, the second bar of the bass player, and the third bar of the flute player!

So obviously if I understand this correctly, if the guitarist decided to make a change in chords, he had better keep in mind, that he is going to be hearing playback from players spanning over several bars that he already participated in.

Now if I'm wrong, please answer my quesiton?
If this is not true live jamming, and there is a delay in bars, how is the guitarist ever going to hear the other players? He's first in the queue. It loops back to him? What is looping back?
So if you think about it, it's pretty difficult to get a real live spontaneous jam out of it. And playing other chords or transposing a key would really blow things up.

I am going to make another post with suggestions for solutions to this quirk in the way Ninjam works.

[harmono]

I'm a fairly new addict to Ninjam, but I want to help others understand how to jam with Ninjam.

I just now posted a lengthy reply about the possiblity of calling chords. Now I have some ideas on how to get around the problem of not being able to play in real time.

Like I was saying Ninjam is cool, because it forces you to be creative in other ways than just knowing the chord changes, or how the tune goes. I also think it is developing a new kind of player, or new form of music. Let me call it Ninjazz :-)
You become a Ninjazz player by learning how Ninjam works, and learning how to be creative in the Ninjam environment.

So far I've mainly played with Alternative, and Metal type players. This is amazing, because normally I would never play with those style of players, but I could feel at home playing with them, because all I had to do was get into the groove that they were playing. I didn't have to worry that I didn't have the same CD collection as they do, and that I wouldn't get the chord changes down. I also didn't have to worrry about excessive volume levels! I happen to like some of metal, and some alternative, but I'm mainly a prog. rock/r&b/fusion type player. I just happen to listen to that kind of music, it has nothing to do with my ability as a player, although I hope it comes through.
After ahile of playing a heavily distorted patch on my keyboard, I switched to a cleaner, but still electronic rhodes piano patch, and tried to play in a jazz style. I had myself conviced that it was working pretty good. I wish I had recorded it!


I've only jammed a couple of times. When I was playing I was wondering about how to break the monotony of playing the same chord over and over. I found that everything can't be perfect. Eventually things have to get crazy for awhile until the rest of the players hear the change that you made.

Here are some of the things I tried. Keep in mind that it's not a perfect transition, but if you have players with a good ear, and some experience with Ninjam, it will work more smoothly.
I've learned much of this from hearing other players, if you understand how Ninjam works, you can become a pretty good Ninjam player.

We were playing to a C chord. I wanted to change to another key, or change the chords. So I started playing C with a root of G, then playing notes that would fit a G chord. After awhile I could hear the guitarist following my "hint" that I wanted this to go in that direction. Before long we all were playing to a G chord. Once eveyone gets that, we can then play around, and transition back to a C eventually. If you are playig a solo, you can play a solo that would work with either chord, so that if the chord changed to a C from G suddenly, your playing sounds right. But you can't expect everyone to play right on top of your chord, because other people are still hearing what you were just playing when they just recorded. See my other post.

What else can we do to keep it fresh?
Change the rhythm. Just because we have to keep the chords simple doesn't mean the beat can't change, or the way you play the chord cant change.

Play a chord pattern that fits one bar. This is really a cool thing to do. I'm not that good at it, but I've heard samples of that kind of playing. You can keep changing these chord patterns as long as whatever you played in previous bars would go with what you are playing now.

Alternate between rhythm, and lead. Don't just play lead the whole time, play rhythm, and let someone else play lead.

[harmono]

I'm a fairly new addict to Ninjam, but I want to help others understand how to jam with Ninjam.

I just now posted a lengthy reply about the possiblity of calling chords. Now I have some ideas on how to get around the problem of not being able to play in real time.

Like I was saying Ninjam is cool, because it forces you to be creative in other ways than just knowing the chord changes, or how the tune goes. I also think it is developing a new kind of player, or new form of music. Let me call it Ninjazz :-)
You become a Ninjazz player by learning how Ninjam works, and learning how to be creative in the Ninjam environment.

So far I've mainly played with Alternative, and Metal type players. This is amazing, because normally I would never play with those style of players, but I could feel at home playing with them, because all I had to do was get into the groove that they were playing. I didn't have to worry that I didn't have the same CD collection as they do, and that I wouldn't get the chord changes down. I also didn't have to worrry about excessive volume levels! I happen to like some of metal, and some alternative, but I'm mainly a prog. rock/r&b/fusion type player. I just happen to listen to that kind of music, it has nothing to do with my ability as a player, although I hope it comes through.
After ahile of playing a heavily distorted patch on my keyboard, I switched to a cleaner, but still electronic rhodes piano patch, and tried to play in a jazz style. I had myself conviced that it was working pretty good. I wish I had recorded it!


I've only jammed a couple of times. When I was playing I was wondering about how to break the monotony of playing the same chord over and over. I found that everything can't be perfect. Eventually things have to get crazy for awhile until the rest of the players hear the change that you made.

Here are some of the things I tried. Keep in mind that it's not a perfect transition, but if you have players with a good ear, and some experience with Ninjam, it will work more smoothly.
I've learned much of this from hearing other players, if you understand how Ninjam works, you can become a pretty good Ninjam player.

We were playing to a C chord. I wanted to change to another key, or change the chords. So I started playing C with a root of G, then playing notes that would fit a G chord. After awhile I could hear the guitarist following my "hint" that I wanted this to go in that direction. Before long we all were playing to a G chord. Once eveyone gets that, we can then play around, and transition back to a C eventually. If you are playig a solo, you can play a solo that would work with either chord, so that if the chord changed to a C from G suddenly, your playing sounds right. But you can't expect everyone to play right on top of your chord, because other people are still hearing what you were just playing when they just recorded. See my other post.

What else can we do to keep it fresh?
Change the rhythm. Just because we have to keep the chords simple doesn't mean the beat can't change, or the way you play the chord cant change.

Play a chord pattern that fits one bar. This is really a cool thing to do. I'm not that good at it, but I've heard samples of that kind of playing. You can keep changing these chord patterns as long as whatever you played in previous bars would go with what you are playing now.

Alternate between rhythm, and lead. Don't just play lead the whole time, play rhythm, and let someone else play lead.

[woollymammoth]

harmono, I enjoyed your treatise. after playing my first ninjam session tonight, I must say that:

a) it was really fucking cool... justin and brennan - you guys rock!
b) there definitely needs to be a way to organize these jams better

isn't it true that the music you hear from each other player is just the previous bar of music that they played? that's what http://www.ninjam.com/ninjam-nutshell would imply. if this is the case, then we should be able to write some interesting compositions that actually take advantage of this.

if anyone is interested in playing like this (ie. with some concrete ideas for a structure discussed beforehand) - please contact me and lemme know when you want to play. email me (ejbmonkey@yahoo.com) progressions or ideas you're interested in trying and I'll post them online along with some of my own ideas. I'm into the jazzy/funk/fusion stuff, happy enough to get ambient, trippy or electronic but not really a metal fan...

cheers.

william.

[bluesina]

I like the chordshout idea. Maybe it's a feature that could be added to the metronome. One of the players would have to pre-program in the chord changes, but the metro would facilitate when the chord changes occur.

[Multiphonikks]

Yeah! The chord Shout idea could really work.

I'm often switching between instruments too so It's good for me to be able to signal where I went...

I have a mic and tend to yell if I want a chord change - but it sometimes can spoil the song or the jam if people yell out so.. yeah...

The latency issue is of course really apparent when I tried to get something more complex going - still didn't stop some fun though

http://autosong.ninjam.com/m3u.php/2...lex-amster.m3u

[highwaykind]

Today is the first time ever I used NinJam ( and the first time I jammed for that matter ).
So much fun !!

And indeed such a different genre of music ( I think someone called it funk? no idea..) from what I normally play. Which basicly is pop rock with a hint of blues or classical every now and then.

But I went to the forum looking for something like this.
Piano here by the way and I find 1 chord or alternating between 2 gets boring quickly.

I would really LOVE to have someone shout the upcoming chord at me, but I can not record piano ( through line in ) and mic ( speaking, mic in ) at the same time I think ??
(and when I tell ninjam to record everything that goes through my on-board soundcard I get this horrible loud feedback hum).

Would it be possible to sort of import a song with lyrics and chords from one of the popular guitar chord archive sites, hit start (have a 1 measure count in?), start playing and then everyone sees something running along at the top ?
(note: I am NO programmer, so have no clue of how difficult what I'm asking for is to implement).
Sort of like a karaoke but with chords.

[synthany]

[QUOTE=norelpref]At times..."open mic night"...and there's very little convergence or intentional synergy. Sometimes I like this, actually.[QUOTE/]

"convergence of intentional energy" is just what is expected when people are improvising together, but I'm sure we can do it with our hearts and minds and ears. when someone comes in and ruins your jam, have a sense of humor. this is public folks.

it might be fun to have themed rooms, but what fresher sounds could be heard than by combining rare forms? merge people.

It's not a competition FFS. Granted I've had to walk away many times b/c of what you've described, but then it makes finding sympatico so much sweeter : a deeper connection based on the final frontier: the mind. and one time it was with a deathmetalhead : and it was wunnafullawunnaful.

extended chat capabilities has been on my mind too - like when I had an event people who were listening wanted to chat with the players in the studio. that would have been fun, but could be a pain in the ass too.

Anyways, I'm not sure about looking at any friggin' traffic light thingys to tell me when or what to play - okay I'll try it.

[JAH]

Originally Posted by norelpref

At times a NINJAM session reminds me of good old "open mic night" where everyone reads their own stuff or plays their own material and there's very little convergence or intentional synergy. Sometimes I like this, actually. You never know what's going to happen.

But as others have mentioned, a bit of structure couldn't hurt to perhaps up the overall musical quality of any given session. Chord sequence, BPM, genre, "mood", "attitude" might be considerations for a session. For this, to avoid the "open season" factor you'd have to create sequestered jam rooms with just a small group with similar aims.

So Death Metallers could get their own room, and funk/blues folks get theirs and so on....

no way! that just takes the whole point out of using ninjam.


It's to have FUN!! not to record a masterpiece!!

what you're suggesting just makes it harder than it should be. sessions shouldn't be pigeon holed into 'genres', it quickly becomes boring to play in one style and doesn't help the musician expand or grow on their creativity. I do agree that there should be a common knowledge as to what sound should be used for each given session. jazz guitar and a scratching turntable will never work unless both musicians try to find some happy medium within a close range of their own personal styles.

if it's slow it's slow. if it's fast it's fast. if it's clean it's clean, if's distorted it's distorted. so on and so on.


the problem is: regardless if it's blues or death metal, people should know what their walking into when opening this program and have some sort of respect for other styles. even if it isn't their traditional way of approaching music. taking a chance and trying to play along just may improve on ones appreciate of music and abilities to jam.

let go of that cozy shell

and

may the improv be with you

[Wouter]

First NINJAM today, and indeed most of the time 2 chords.
If you get this though, you can have 1 player who solos the first couple of chords. FE; 4/4 Em/E D/E C/E D/E and back to Em/E.
If you play that 2 times, big chance others will pick it up.
Much harder it is to change it while youre playing.

Going to do some more research how the delay exactly works since i dont get that yet.

But the first jam was great, awesome initiatve, youll see me a lot more here

[highwaykind]

Had a GREAT 1 chord (!) ninjam session a while ago, but I would not at all mind someone copy/paste a URL of some chords/TABS into the chatbox thingie so I can play along with a song...even if I don't know it it shouldn't be too hard to switch chords in time - you hear them changing and it has to be the next one in line.

[tbfx]

Been working on a white board chord/scale chat
thing for a bit. Still needs some work though.
(this requires firefox btw)

http://www.rhinocrash.com/chat

Just type in the chord....
am7 adim etc

[highwaykind]

Wow !! Bookmarked !

Could you add piano chords to it as well ?
Like on this site http://nfo.net/MFILE/
Just as letters - no need for a picture if you ask me... (Bbm7 would be A#,C#,F,G# ).