ON 25 JUNE, jazz singer and high-school music teacher Daniel Hutchins broke into a ballad at the San Antonio Convention Center in Texas, accompanied by music student Jacob Mann on piano. It was a perfectly synchronised performance – but the pair were 2000 kilometres apart. Mann played his contribution online from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Their interaction was made possible by a real-time technology that looks set to change the face of musical composition, rehearsal and live performance. Not being in the same room, city or even country need no longer be a barrier to musical collaboration.
The network that Hutchins and Mann used is an Italian-developed system called LOLA– and it provides such pin-sharp audio precision that it can even be used for live music events in which some participants are only present online. In a demo in October last year, for instance, a ...
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