Playing piano online with others

[lostinidlewonder]

Where are some good places to play piano live with others? It certainly is good to practice this if you tend to be very nervous while playing infront of others.

multiplayerpiano.com is one of the more popular ones I can think of. I find myself going there now and then just to practice and discover new music other people play.

You should find playing the piano online on the website I suggested above will set up a situation where people are not really listening to you very closely, sometimes some will but most of the times they are not in any case the never can actually see you. This creates a relaxing environment for you to practice playing in front of others. As you get more confident you can start playing piano through video or audio with individals or groups, there are places in discord or social media, I haven't really looked into the groups which share piano through live videos/audio though so maybe others can offer suggestions?


Some people have troubles connecting their digital to multiplayerpiano (if you are using chrome) you can use this process to fix that:

Type in link bar:
"chrome://flags/#unsafely-treat-insecure-origin-as-secure"
Enable the feature, put in "https://www.multiplayerpiano.com" into the box below
Relaunch Chrome.

[quantum]

Thanks for sharing that. 

Appears to be MIDI based, so to play one will need a MIDI instrument. 

[quantum]

There is Jamulus that allows groups of musicians to play, rehearse or jam together.  It's an open source project.  It is not too demanding on internet speed, so good option for people with slow connections.  It is recommended to use an audio interface with good low latency drivers.

https://jamulus.io/


JackTrip is another open source project.  Much better audio quality is possible, but that also comes with increased demands on internet connection speed.  Also there is no GUI at the present time, so some command line is needed to get it running.  Not too difficult though, just follow the documentation.

https://ccrma.stanford.edu/software/jacktrip/

[lostinidlewonder]

Interesting quantum. These would be handy to use when connecting with particular people you want to jam with!

I was thinking of more public type forums where random people are all in a room I remember over 20+ years ago yahoo groups used to have a classical piano room were people could just play over it with their microphones, it was pretty fun until it shut down.

[quantum]

Jamulus has both public and private servers.  There are some public servers with a large amount of spaces and welcome random people to join, there are also servers specifically set up for ensembles to practice.  Choral groups in particular have been making a lot of use of it to rehearse.  The prevailing etiquette is that one should not barge in on a piece as to be disruptive, rather wait for a break and ask. 

I was thinking of more public type forums where random people are all in a room

I've seen some Jamulus public servers that come close, though they tend to be pop or jazz focused.  Haven't spotted piano focused servers, but that is not stopping anyone from creating one. 

[lostinidlewonder]

Jamulus has both public and private servers.  There are some public servers with a large amount of spaces and welcome random people to join, there are also servers specifically set up for ensembles to practice.  Choral groups in particular have been making a lot of use of it to rehearse.  The prevailing etiquette is that one should not barge in on a piece as to be disruptive, rather wait for a break and ask. 

I'll certainly download it and give it a shot sounds really great would be nice to see other instruments and singers perform live.

I've seen some Jamulus public servers that come close, though they tend to be pop or jazz focused.  Haven't spotted piano focused servers, but that is not stopping anyone from creating one. 

Maybe we should invade it ahahah Would be good to get a community of pianists who play piano each other.

On multiplayerpiano there are a number of QWERTY keyboard pianists who are quite impressive! One was so impressive I didn't think it was real until he did a video and showed me his skills, amazing! I also asked him to type out exactly what he is doing on the keyboard and he could write out the gibberish immediately which was all correct if you tested it. I like that website because it is a concentration of piano minded people, I've discovered so many new pieces just by visiting it occasionally.

[anacrusis]

Did you try out Jamulus yet? I'm curious to hear about your experience.

[lostinidlewonder]

Yeah well it asked me to have an ASIO audio driver installed, I don't use those kind of things so I gave up. I'll try it later on though.

[ranjit]

If you're on windows, look up asio4all.

[lostinidlewonder]

Yep cheers ranjit that was the page I was looking at but didn't continue because I wasn't sure.

[timothy42b]

I have Jacktrip and have done a number of rehearsals with ensemble with it.

It works well and pretty much eliminates latency, beyond what you'd have anyway if you were spread out across a large stage.

The cons:
1.  You need a reasonably fast internet connection
2.  There is an upfront cost to the equipment, around $250.
3.  We found that older players (okay all of us) struggled a bit with technology getting it going.  The first four rehearsals we lost at least a half hour waiting for everyone to follow simple instructions, get on line, plug the mike into the right port, find the unmute button.

[lelle]

It works well and pretty much eliminates latency, beyond what you'd have anyway if you were spread out across a large stage.

As a 28 year old boomer, this blows my mind. Back in my day, there was always latency in internet calls. I wonder how they do it.

[timothy42b]

As a 28 year old boomer, this blows my mind. Back in my day, there was always latency in internet calls. I wonder how they do it.

They eliminate error checking in the transmission part of the cycle. 

[lelle]

They eliminate error checking in the transmission part of the cycle.

Cool! WIll have to read up on how that works. Thanks for the info.