An Interview with Chris Chafe and Lawrence Fyfe
Our newest Stanford University course, Online Jamming and Concert Technology, has been live for about two weeks now and the user response has been amazing.
Collaboration is an essential part of any artistic process. Whether artists are working together to create theater, music, dance, or educational web platforms ;), they often cite collaboration as the reason for their success (or failure).
It is common to see collaboration taught as an element of artistic process, but it is rare—if not unheard of—to ever see it featured as a work of art in itself. Online Jamming and Concert Technology is much more than a course about playing music over the internet, it is a course about the art of collaboration. In fact, some of the artistic works created with the techniques taught in the class can be performed only through online networks.
We recently sat down with Chris Chafe (the course instructor) and Lawrence Fyfe to talk about the course and creating works of art for networked collaboration.
Is this a new course or is it something you have offered before at CCRMA?
CC: This is a first time offering. This is is a course that by its very nature should be done online. In fact, it doesn’t really work in the traditional classroom setting.
What are your goals for the students taking this course?
CC: My goal is for students to master the technical part of all this; to understand the basic principles of what is required to do this. And also, what it means for students in different cities/states/countries to connect in this way.
Can you talk about the software used in this course?
CC: Sure. The Software we’re using is called JackTrip. JackTrip is an open source app that’s been around for the last ten years or so, and it is designed specifically for this kind of thing. It’s one function is to help people hook their audio sound cards into the internet; to help them play music together; or, really, to expand the possibilities of online music collaboration.
Traditionally we’ve done this one or two more partners, but we have also done it with seven or even eight. The important thing to remember is that JackTrip allows the upload of uncompressed audio at full resolution, on as many channels simultaneously as a network can tolerate.
Is this kind of art making new?
CC: Absolutely not. Think of it this way: if you’re eighteen years old and you’re a musician and you’re sitting in your bedroom, I think you are going to be surprised if you COULDN’T do something like this. Don’t get me wrong. This is an emerging practice, sure. But the technology is there and it has been for a long time. There are just some technical requirements that go into making it actually happen with any level of quality.
This course is about teaching students how to navigate those technical hurdles. Because the software is a lot more than single consumer based. This is concert quality stuff and what people can do with it runs the gamut of eighteen-year-olds in their bedroom to professional organizations connecting remote concert venues in real-time.
Can you talk a little more about these hurdles?
CC: Sure. We’re teaching the fundamentals of this practice and the software that requires an understanding of the fundamentals. Which is to say, this is not some plug-and-play kind of thing.
That being said, the cool part is that once they understand those fundamentals, students can do whatever they want with this. That’s the open part of this course. It taps into the imagination of what can be done with this software.
Can you talk a little bit about your work, Lawrence?
LF: Yeah. I’m interested in teaching people to use networks for music. But I have a wide scope there. My professional practice concerns everything from people sitting next to each other making music together on two separate computers, people making music together on opposite sides of the room, on opposite sides of a building, a country, or the world. I believe that people should be able to make music in all those situations.
CC: Lawrence is being modest. He’s a pioneer in this kind of work and this class wouldn’t work without him. The kind of thing we’re talking about is much more than a simple telephone call. What we’re really talking about is interface design. It would be one thing to play music together over a network. But when you compose the interface—the way that you are connecting with people—then the potential of what you can do becomes much more exciting. This is what people who are doing this are most interested in: the interface.
What goes into that interface design?
CC: Well, in the case of using this kind of thing to make music, the requirements are both technical and musical. The technical constraints faced by new users have to do with how to set up their sound card, how to mic their instruments… Basically, how to do all the kind of work that goes into making a recording. That’s the technical audio side, but there is also another side: getting the network right; opening ports on your router; making sure that the details of firewalls on both networked computers are working right; becoming aware of when the network is under-provisioned and causing signal hiccups in the connection. All these audio/network components can get pretty technical, but they also require a certain kind of ear training to get them right—hence the “musical” side of things.
Can you talk more about “open part of this course” as you called it?
CC: Sure. The thing that people aren’t always aware of about this kind of thing is that, depending on what you are trying to achieve, you are going to need to modify expectations. For example: achieving a “same room” sound is only possible at certain distances. Now, this can be a problem. But it can also be a benefit.
What you realize when you really start doing this is: there is an effect of playing together at great distances on the music you create—on the music you intend to play. This lets you start looking at playing across the world as its own medium. And in that case, there is music which works very well at that distance, but that doesn’t if you were in the same room. In this way, the network itself becomes an acoustic medium, just like the air is its own acoustic medium.
What I want students to ask themselves is: within this electronic medium, what is the music that you want to make? What music CAN you make?
Is there anything else you’d like to tell students interested in this course?
CC: This is a practical class. We will be pairing musicians together and these student pairs will have to work out the relationship of playing together while also being apart from each other. As long as you’re up for that, I think we’re going to have a lot of fun.
Online Jamming and Concert Technology is currently open and active on Kadenze. Interested students are encouraged to sign up and start jamming today. To learn more, visit Kadenze.com or read our blog post on the course.
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