Enhancing internet musical collaboration with the Telemidi technology.
We all know how musicians love to get together – to compose, to jam and to have some fun.
In person, that is.
But during the COVID pandemic this natural state was tipped on its head.
That was until some creative thinking from an ECU research student made it possible.
The pandemic was a trigger for a whole lot of creative thinking.
Problem solvers came to the fore.
And PhD candidate Matt Bray from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts was one of them.
Matt's research was about how to reduce latency in live internet performance.
How to enable musicians from anywhere in the world to perform together – in unison!
The Telemidi test
Latency is a time delay that occurs during a live internet performance.
It can make singing and playing in time with other performers confusing and difficult.
When latency exceeds around 30 milliseconds musicians fall out of time when performing with each other.
Enter Matt Bray and his Telemidi.
This is a networking process that coordinates musical performance data (MIDI data) over the internet.
And not to be deterred by a challenge, Matt decided to test his research with musicians located – and performing – in two distinctly different places.
ECU researcher Matt Bray in action with his technology.
From Rwanda to Canada
The performers included pipe organists in Calgary and Vancouver plus a keyboard player and a 100-student choir in Rwanda.
The distance the data travelled across the internet from Africa to Vancouver and Calgary (in Canada) was approximately 17,404km, with a one-way travel time of approximately 290 – 350 milliseconds.
"Along with the Telemidi technology, we needed to slightly alter the performance process so that everyone was in sync," Matt said.
"The keyboardist played his chords one beat ahead of the score so the data would travel to Canada on time."
It worked a treat.
Says Matt: "I have managed to overcome approximately 80 per cent of latency issues in my research, which means people from anywhere on the planet can collaborate and create music together."
