SoundRadix the makers of what we think are the most innovative plugins out there have been working on something new and yesterday. As a very early beta release Sound Radix aren’t yet doing an official announcement but Nir Averbuch of SoundRadix shared more than a sneak peek, he shared free access to the beta of their newest project - Pajam.
Nir Posted:
Hello dear friends,
In the past six months, we at Sound Radix were hard at work on something quite special and I couldn't wait to finally tell you about it.
Pajam! is the world's first online collaborative looper jamming platform, with video. It's currently available for macOS, Windows, and Linux.
We're still at an early development stage, so you may stumble upon some issues, but otherwise Pajam is fully functional and free to use.
We'd love to hear what you think of it and what would make it more creative and fun for you.
To start jamming, simply head on to https://pajam.live/ to download Pajam. Feel free to share and invite friends to join.
If you have any questions or would like to jam with me, just let me know!
Without further ado, Pajam!
What Is Pajam?
Pajam is an online collaborative audio/video looper. The reasons for developing a tool like this in 2020 are self-evident and in spite of all the rapid uptake and development of tools like Zoom with its newly announced Professional Music Mode and the ingenious but very tech-heavy experiments in real-time collaboration over the internet by the universities, there is undoubtedly a demand for a simple to use online jamming tool for all the isolated electronic musicians making loop-based music out there. This is what Pajam is for.
The technical challenge facing real-time collaboration for bands remain significant at the moment. Latency and unpredictable network performance make this a challenge, which improves as broadband infrastructure improves but it is difficult to see how it could ever go away. The challenges facing loop-based music are different and potentially easier to solve so it will be really interesting to see how Pajam works in practice.
Haven’t We Been Here Before?
People with long memories might recall the Rocket Network which offered a similar concept when it was launched in the mid 90s until it was finally closed in 2003. In his essay “The Downfall of The Rocket Network” Steven Thornely identifies some interesting reasons why this idea was ahead of its time and ultimately failed:
Despite the hype created by The Rocket Network’s service, there were musical limitations to The Rocket Network’s capabilities, including restrictions on the transfer of high quality audio over the internet, inability to actually communicate in real-time, and lack of visual connection between musicians.
It looks like all of these issues have been addressed in Pajam. The improvements in network infrastructure mean high quality audio over the internet is enormously improved since 20 years ago and real time video and chat features are included dealing with the last two points.
Check Back For Updates
It’s early days and as we learn more we’ll update this page so check back for new information.