Bandlab: Cloud-Based Social Music Creation Platform | Hacker News Reader

Bandlab: Cloud-Based Social Music Creation Platform

bandlab.com

50 pointsgrawprog35 comments

I am not a musician or music producer but I like bandlab a lot. But only on mobile because the browser version is simply unusable on my linux (whether it's Chromium or Firefox.

If you want to know what a musically inept person can produce with it check out the first two songs (VRWorkout and Happy Workout) in the VRWorkout non-VR demo mode here https://vrworkout.at/game

If you are on mobile that won't work because it has not touch controls but here is the link to the files in the github repo https://github.com/mgschwan/VRWorkout/tree/master/godot_proj...

I’ve been using this. It is pretty slick! It is basically Garage Band for the web, and has a similar interface and features for laying multiple audio tracks for a collaboration.

They should drop the buzzwords and call it what it is: A mobile app for creating music with other people.

I've used the iOS version and as a collaboration platform it works well. My garage project turned to it during lockdown and it was pretty amazing what you could do when it came to making demo versions of songs even without specialized interfaces ... I literally placed my phone on a chair with the mic facing the bass amp to record my take over the existing drum and guitar tracks. That sounded good enough to me, but one of the other members was able to extract all of the tracks including vocals into some other app and do an amazing job on the next mix.

For recording ideas, I have found it and similar apps like GarageBand less useful as they're loop-based and that's not how I approach writing music.

Needs a video or something to explain what it actually does. "Cloud-Based Social Music Creation Platform" is just marketing nonsense. I'm guessing it's a DAW that runs in-browser, but I can't tell. I'm not going to bother to sign up to find out.

Free use of a DAW (what used to be Sonar), and a social media platform for sharing music. I imagine it's competing with bandcamp/soundcloud/splice simultaneously.

I've been working on an IDE for music composition. Launching soon http://ngrid.io

I am very intrigued. I barely am able to keep scales in my head not even thinking about the other "rules". So I am looking forward to check this out.

This attitude is problematic. No tool will ever replace fluency, and thousands of hours of tedious practice is the only way to get there. The only way. There are many hacks and shortcuts, but nothing will ever work better for you than your own mind, well trained.

Problematic to whom, to me, you or the general public? I have a casual interest in how music production works but don't plan to do anything serious in it. I like to dabble around a bit and if I like what I make I am happy. There is no expectation that what I make will appeal to others, but if anyone likes something, I am happy too.

I don't think this tool will make a good music producer or composer out of someone but if it helps, what's the harm?

It harms you. One day you'll want to accomplish something and you won't have the tools. There are thousands of musicians who quit for every one having fun. You will have a better, more fulfilling time if you study music.

What is that something? Why couldn't it wait until you have the tools? Is this like the time they would tell you in math class that you won't always have a calculator on you?

I've been making music for close to 20 years now, and haven't retained a single piece of 'proper music theory', including names of the chords or notes I play. I've been in countless bands across genres, released albums with multiple artists as a producer, and have placed with major record label artists. Every time I try to 'study music' I feel boxed in creatively, and not knowing these concepts has not once hindered my ability to play music collaboratively or create it independently. What exactly can I not accomplish by not knowing a scale, again?

I can feel your passion about this topic, so I guess music (and playing) is an integral part of your life. That is really admirable and I could imagine having the same passion about it if I'd focused on it from my childhood up. I did chose a different path and now approaching 40 want to "do music" coming from the technical side. You could describe me as the youtube learner. I like to watch some music theory videos from time to time, but what I like even more is doing something and learning what works and what does not by making mistakes.

I am not afraid to make mistakes and am even happier if I discovered something on my own that probably any music student would have learned in the first class.

So I'll tip my hat to you for having such a deep passion for music, but I will still move along my own path

thought using loops was cheating, so I programmed my own using samples. I then thought using samples was cheating, so I recorded real drums. then thought that programming it was cheating, so i learned to play drums for real. I then thought using bought drums was cheating,

so I learned to make my own. then i thought using premade skins was cheating, so I killed a goat and skinned it. I then thought that that was cheating too, so l grew my own goat from a baby goat, I also think that is cheating, but I'm not sure where to go from here. i haven't made any music lately, what with the goat farming and all.

Do you remember all the scales? I'm guessing that's a no, since there is like thousands of them.

No, but I would if I could. And I remember enough to improvise live with other musicians; I'm not always the best, but I know enough not to embarrass myself; and I know how to learn more quickly.

Did you consider that people might have different goals?

What makes it an IDE and not a sequencer with intellisense-like features/ more presets?

I mean, call it whatever you want, but "IDE for music" conveys the idea better than "sequence with intellisense-like features/other things". But I'll also have some advanced color coding, version control, and "refactoring".

If you do not pay for a product, you are the product. So what's the catch here? Copyright of the music is theirs? They listen 24/7 ?

They sell hardware that interfaces with their app. They might also might have premium features for plugins or virtual instruments.

It's free, but they have some additional hardware they sell. Founder's dad is a palm oil billionaire from Malaysia, maybe that's how they can keep it free? Dunno. It's a great product, I really like it.

Unless I'm missing something, there doesn't seem to be any sort of demo I can check out (even in some limited form) without signing up. That's kind of a bummer since I've played around with various applications like this in the past but don't particularly want yet another account signup just to see how this one works.

Do they still have trouble with the memory limits on browsers? A couple years ago I remember they couldn't handle more than 10 minutes of audio, which was the dealbreaker for me at the time.

And did they kill Cakewalk's products or just transfer ownership? I was never a user, just remember the acquisition.

I think the limit's 15 minutes per track now and as far as I know, they haven't killed cakewalk they own it now and have been releasing it as part of bandlab I think.

I don't know too much about Bandlab, I just found it the other day and it seemed pretty cool so I thought I'd post it here.

Actually, I have to be say, i'm mainly curious as to how the hell they make money and had the money to buy Cakewalk.

I know HN tends to get into that stuff, so I was hoping it might come up in the comments.

They have what one could call outsized presence at industry trade shows. At least for a new player in an old industry.

As for Cakewalk, Gibson killed them off alongside a bunch of other stupid acquisitions they made in the early 2010s. The Bandlab acquisition was just IP apparently. Personally I'd be surprised if it cost more than low 7 figures.

Anyone know what the current state of the art is for live remote jamming and collaboration?

Are the latencies anywhere close to being low enough to play in time with others (I'm thinking distances of about 200 miles)

Yeah, I'd like to know this too. Our choir is facing remote rehearsals for the foreseeable future... as I understand it, if you want latency low enough for live jamming, you need purpose-built networking equipment.

See https://jammr.net/howitworks.html for a clever workaround, but I wonder if it is that great....

Checkout Jacktrip. Worth the effort however it's not user friendly. For user friendly, the options are limited if you also want low latency. Jamkazam is one of the best bets there.

Live internet jamming is just not possible. It never will be, unless we advance beyond our current understanding of physics.

https://endlesss.fm

What numbers are you basing that on? Humans have jammed with crappy Midi gear and music software with awful latency since the 80s. The speed of light of a couple of hundred km doesn't strike me as categorically worse than that.

A great idea, but the latencies make it impossible to even play keys, to say nothing about live collaboration.

Live internet jamming will never ever be possible. The tiniest bit of asycnhrony opens up a ton of potential, though.

Due to the situation we have to play remotely. The latency is fine if you are close enough (same city). We’re using jamulus as self-hosted, but you can try Jamkazam as well.

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