SherWeb

Scouring school, church and club notice boards for band audition posters has become a thing of the past. The internet has brought the world together and that includes bands and musicians. You don’t need to live in a bustling city with a booming music culture to take part in the music scene. Now you can jam with talented artists from around the world with just an instrument and a computer. Here are some of the ways you can connect with other musicians and collaborate (or just listen to some of the stuff they come up with!)

YouTube

Just as Microsoft Sharepoint hosting is one of the most widely used business tools for organizing schedules, contacts and manage tasks, YouTube has become a common meeting place for many musicians and composers. There are a myriad of professional and amateur musicians exhibiting their skills through their video submissions. These musicians have found a new and interesting use for the popular video site: they turn the site it into a mixer.

One example of this is Darren Soloman’s project ‘In B Flat’. Darren simply asked YouTube users to each contribute a video of them playing an instrument in the key of B flat. The result is quite amazing. If you go to his website you can click as few or as many embedded videos on the page as you want and produce an ambient sounding piece of music. You can even adjust the volumes of the videos to emphasize certain tracks allowing the listener to have a say in how the song will turn out.

Guitar and drums are played in Ontario, Canada and vocals in Texas, America but despite the distance they come together to perform a great sounding cover version of Heart’s Barracuda.

Ten musicians from six countries collaborate to make the largest Irish online music collaboration in history.

YouTube Symphony Orchestra

YouTube invited users 14 and up from across the world to submit video samples of their musical talent for consideration into the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. Every video was judged and those who were selected we flown to New York to perform at Carnegie Hall to a live audience in-person and streaming over the net.

Kompoz

Kompoz is a musical social site. Users submit audio tracks using the website interface or their free external program and other users contribute their accompanying tracks to create a song. You can even submit lyrics with tempo/style specifications and request someone to sing according to your description. The global nature of the site makes involvement much easier for musicians that don’t have the time or the locale to participate in regular jam sessions or band practices. Many of these recordings are available for everyone to listen to.

Ninjam

Ninjam is one of the first online jamming software to become popular with artists. The program allows musicians to do close-to-realtime jamming for free. There are some drawbacks: It requires a lot of resources, computer power and bandwith. The main drawback is that recording is often a few seconds off making it sometimes difficult to get a proper jam session vibe.

eJamming

eJamming is a service that claims to have solved the bandwith issues that Ninjam and other jamming programs have by making the connection between jamees peer-to-peer. Only downside? You have to pay for it. Some packages go for as high as 300$ USD. You can, however, try the software for free for 30 days.

Now there’s no excuses for any musicians out there that claim they can’t find people to jam with. With the large selection of innovative solutions, playing alone can be a distant memory.