[PD] Internet collaboration [WAS: cd-rom pd-system]

Alex alex at idoia.com
Fri Apr 18 08:50:29 CEST 2003


Hi,

Playing music over the Internet from different locations but at the 
same time, has always been a dream and all the attempts so far  have 
all encountered the same problems due to latency that has always been 
considered as drawbacks of today technology rather than tools to 
incorporate into music composition.

I am using pd at the moment to construct  an application  that allows 
three musicians (or group of) to play together from different locations 
(New York, Biarritz in France and London).
I use the Olaf' s shout*~  and Ogg*~ objects and have a system that 
records audio on a tempo, sends it through a shoutcast/icecast server 
and re-synchronizes it on the computer of the listener.
Latency,here is used in two ways and makes essential part of the 
composition:
- the audio is buffered and snapped to the tempo (on a crotchet or 
division of it) according to the will of the players.
- the audio is buffered during n bars, the way players can change notes 
and compose unique piece depending on their location.
It is very experimental but I think it brings new ways of thinking and 
tackling the musical composition. It is still at its experimental phase 
but I am constantly working on it.

note: The official gig online will be presented the 3.4.5.6 of July at 
Common Wealth Conference Center in London, Festival of Electronic Music 
in Vera (Basque Country) and at The University of Digital Arts in New 
York. The three different streams will also be available to stream.



On Friday, April 18, 2003, at 03:12  am, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:

>> Along that vein, is there a method for sending/receiving arbitrary 
>> values
>> and/or module layout and/or audio streams, etc, via a TCP or UDP
>> connection?
>>
>> A friend and I have a dream;  we live a thousand kilometres apart, but
>> would love to be able to collaborate in real time on a music work.  PD
>> seems perfect for our needs (different operating systems, for a 
>> start).
>
> You're only really going to get acceptable latency if you stick to 
> using
> messages.  There is a lot of latency to streaming audio on the web.  
> Some
> research projects at universities have managed to get audio streaming 
> at
> close to realtime, but that was using Internet2, which is a restricted
> access high-speed network.
>
> But on the other hand its pretty easy to make a Pd patch that interacts
> over a network.  You might even be able to get decent latency.  
> [netsend]
> and [netreceive] are built-in, but [netserver] and [netclient] in Olaf
> Matthes' maxlib are much easier to use.





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