New Software for Jamming Over the 'Net

The Interactive Technologies Group (ITG) at Ruksun Software Technologies today released the Alpha version of their online music software, LiveJam. Available for free download from http://www.livejam.com/, LiveJam is a product that enables musicians the world over to play music or "jam" with each other LIVE over the Internet. Musicians can log in, take a look at the rooms available, join the room of their choice and then literally make music together with other musicians.

"The potential for a product like this is tremendous" said Anmol Chawla, the Program Manager for LiveJam at ITG. "There are millions of talented amateur musicians all over the world, who do not have the resources to attract the attention of recording companies. Similarly, there are hundreds of recording companies worldwide who are always on the lookout for fresh talent. A product like LiveJam on a universal platform like the Internet can well and truly become a cost-effective bridge between the two."

That is one of the obvious windfalls of LiveJam. Lucky Ali, one of the most popular musicians in Asia was the first professional musician to experiment with the product. "Going by the trends in other industries, the Internet is all set to be the next medium for creating, composing and recording music. LiveJam actually gets online musicians together on one platform, allowing them to do just that," said Lucky. In fact, so taken in was Lucky with the product, that he is now in the process of becoming a legal stakeholder in the company.

"LiveJam is a showcase for Olympus, which is a generic Community Server template and therefore a platform for Internet based multi-user applications," said Susheel Nesargi, Business Unit Manager at ITG. "Based on standards based technologies, Olympus is the primary product of the Interactive Technologies Group and LiveJam, one of its implementations. The Olympus architecture takes care of the LiveJam backend, and ensures maximum efficiency and minimum loss while sending music packets across the Internet."

With lag inherent in the Internet, a real time online application like LiveJam needed an intelligent solution to provide "live" transfer of notes. Which is why the solution that LiveJam represents is revolutionary. "Soon, Virtual studios will be created real time which, at the creators discretion, can be made private or invite-only," said Rohit Ojha, Technical Lead on LiveJam. "Tracks could be first created, stored, and then transmitted for others to add onto. These can then be recorded, saved and replayed whenever the user chooses to. Many more permutations and combinations like these could be worked on, once the feedback cycle begins."

The User Interface is intuitive and very easy to pick up. A musician just needs to plug in his/her synthesizer and play -- the software does the task of converting those notes into bits and bytes and transferring them to the rest of the musicians logged on. Music keys and octaves are also mapped to the keyboard for the benefit of those who do not have MIDI enabled instruments.