Behind the Scenes Recording Somniscape Calm, Vol.4 remotely during COVID-19 Quarantine
In the months of quarantine, I've spent a good portion of the time putting my efforts into the Somniscape albums. I have found my motivation to record and release these albums free for two reasons. One, because times like this seem to call upon anything that can possibly bring a sense of peace and calm to our lives. And because of the possible loss of jobs during COVID-19, making the albums free was a way I thought I could help. But my second reason for working on this music was actually for me personally. A global pandemic and self-quarantine doesn't exactly come without a level of daily anxiety. The music I work on each day does affect me mentally, emotionally, spiritually, etc. My listeners are not the only ones that want music that will help calm the nerves. Creating the music of Somniscape puts me in that calm headspace and gets me centered.
“…the limitations we are dealing with is the speed of light.”
During the quarantine, many musicians have had to reach out of the norm. I had to sort my way through methods of recording remotely online. Its always been a dream to be able to just jam with and record another musician on the other side of the world. However, we always have one serious setback to doing this…latency. I remember chatting to a friend who worked in the network industry about this. He said, "the limitation we are dealing with is the speed of light...but we're working on that." I thought that was pretty funny. Yeah, the speed of light is a real drag, right? But In reality, it takes 0.13 seconds for light to travel around the world. However, through fiber optic cables, it takes about 0.2 seconds. So this means that I can connect to someone on the other side of the world no quicker than 0.1 seconds. This is, of course, not accounting for the various networking paths and processing time. Regardless, no matter how fast my connection is or how direct my fiber-optic path is, I will never be able to connect faster than 0.1 seconds unless someone figures out how break the speed of light. To those of you who are saying, "What's the big deal…100 milliseconds is the blink of an eye." If you've tried recording or jamming with a drummer that is perpetually 200 milliseconds behind the beat (this is accounting for the music to sent to the performer and back to my ears), then you know its like dragging a dead horse. So to put this in numbers, if I'm recording a song at 100 bpm, a single beat is 600 milliseconds. So even if my virtual drummer is locked into the beat from what he hears on his end, his returned signal is going to be 1/3 of the beat off! That's not just an inconvenience. It makes internet jamming impossible.
“…record musicians…from Colorado to London”
I'm not betting on being able to jam on the internet in my life-time because I'm skeptical that my network friend is going to discover a way to beat the speed of sound. The good news is that it's possible to record musicians over the internet, which is what I did from Colorado to London with my friend Suhail who plays the unique and beautiful Indian instrument called the Sarangi. Over the last year, I have brainstormed the concept of delay compensation in recording. What if I was able to know or control the exact amount of latency both ways? If I could then have a system of compensation for those delay times, I could potentially have the remote recording fall back into time on my recording end. After a few weeks of thinking about this genius idea, I found out companies have already done this and have created commercially usable programs. Just like most of my great ideas, I'm always at least a few decades late. I ended up using a program called VST Connect that unfortunately only works only with Cubase (Steinberg). Fortunately, I use Cubase for my main DAW for composition.
“…remote studio recording is the new normal”
It was a real trip recording Suhail with high-quality audio as if he were in the tracking room on the other side of the wall. The only difference was that I couldn't just say, "Nice take bro, come on into the control room and listen with me!" I'm old enough to remember life without the internet. So to think that I can record anyone in the world who has a computer and microphone from the comfort of my home studio really blows m mind. It actually made the experience of recording Calm, Vol.4 a novelty of its own. Yet, it also set the bar for what recording will be like for much of my future. In fact, since I am in quarantine as we speak, all of the current projects are using remote online collaboration. So for now, remote studio recording is the new normal.
Thank you so much for all of your enthusiasm for the album. Today, BandCamp is waiving its fee to help artists during the pandemic. So if you haven't already, please forward the album link to as many people you know who may need some music that brings some needed peace.
Cheers!
Eric Owyoung
Tracks on Calm Vol. 4
featuring Suhail Yusuf Khan on Sarangi:
Track 5 - Drifting
Track 7 - Station
Track 8 - Relative
Track 9 - When We Are in Need
If you are looking into remote recording, here a few helpful tools that might get you started:
METHOD #1: JUST USE CUBASE
VST Connect (Requires Cubase)
METHOD #2: DOWNLOAD A TEMPORARY DAW ON YOUR CLIENT'S COMPUTER, USE SCREENSHARING TO CONTROL THE SESSION, AND MONITOR BOTH WAYS WITH AUDIO STREAMING.
This is a bit more complicated than but here’s what you need:
1. AUDIO PROGRAM THAT CAN BE LOADED ONTO MUSICIANS COMPUTER
Reaper (Free or cheap!)
2. MONITORING HIGH QUALITY AUDIO REMOTELY BOTH WAYS
LISTEN plugin (AAX, AU, VST for pc/mac) or Cleanfeed (for those on OS, method may require soundflower)
3. TO CONTROL THEIR SCREEN/COMPUTER
