Arman Sedgwick-Billimoria:

Hello.

Mathr de Leon:

Yo yo. I'm going to merge our call real quick.

Arman Sedgwick-Billimoria:

Sounds great. Beautiful.

Mathr de Leon:

All right, we're here.

John Taylor:

All right, let's try this again.

Mathr de Leon:

You're listening to Traceroute, I'm Mathr de Leon, and that is our producer John Taylor and his keyboardist, Arman Sedgwick-Billimoria. They've been trying to figure out how to keep Arman engaged with the rest of their band, The Uninvited, since Arman recently relocated from the San Francisco Bay Area to Cardiff-by-the-Sea in Southern California. Now, in the first part of our story, we sourced the perfect tool for the job, and today we're going to take that tool, a low latency software application for remote music collaboration, for a little spin. Now, if you haven't listened to part one, you should probably pause here, go do that now, then come back. Okay. You good? On with the show?

John Taylor:

Hello, my name is John. I'm a big goofy guy, and I'm-

Mathr de Leon:

That works. Let's hear the guitar. Hitting about and then minus 18. Okay, let's hear the keyword. Yeah, they're great. Great mix.

John Taylor:

Awesome.

Mathr de Leon:

And we are rolling and it is rolling this time, so ...

John Taylor:

Hell yeah.

Mathr de Leon:

All right. So this thing is working ish. How long did it take us? 44 minutes?

John Taylor:

About 45 minutes to get this thing up and running and ready to go. Yeah. So not for the spontaneous creativity-

Mathr de Leon:

No, absolutely not.

John Taylor:

That you might have.

Mathr de Leon:

If you've got 44 minutes to spare before a jam session. So far we've identified three components that we consider crucial to this type of collaboration. These are elements that our perfect tool ought to have if it's going to help solve John's problem. And that first element is speed. That's where the latency comes in. We need it to be near realtime enough that it doesn't affect a musician's ability to stay in relative time with their collaborator. Also, we need it to be accessible, meaning we need to be able to, with relative ease, download and install a piece of software that's going to allow us to connect without a ton of setup and back and forth at least after the initial run. Now, the other thing that's pretty crucial to this collaboration is feedback. While there's work being done on how to create a feedback loop that really augments a digital setting the technology is not quite there yet. But two out of three ain't bad, so we're going to make do. The other thing we're going to delve into this week is this vibe that John says ...

John Taylor:

Is the single most important thing.

Mathr de Leon:

And something tells me that the very technical term vibe won't pass muster in an academic setting, so we really ought to define that idea a bit better. But before we get into all the smart stuff I'm sure you, like me, are dying to get in there. So we can take this thing for a test drive. Oh,

John Taylor:

Let me adjust my mic down again. There you go. Okay, I'll come to you. Okay. No, fuck that. You start. You start. Let me see if I can ... I can't. I can't.

Arman Sedgwick-Billimoria:

Interesting. Let's try-

Mathr de Leon:

The tempo keeps slowing. One of you is slowing to meet the other, and then it was like-

John Taylor:

Exactly. And it's a loop.

Mathr de Leon:

... somebody was just turning the tempo down.

John Taylor:

All right, let's count it off.

Mathr de Leon:

You lead in, Johnny.

John Taylor:

Okay. One, two, one, two. No.

Arman Sedgwick-Billimoria:

Interesting. Because I felt on on that. I thought we came in perfectly, at least on my end with that.

John Taylor:

All right, let me lead it off and you join in.

Arman Sedgwick-Billimoria:

Okay.

John Taylor:

Okay? Yeah, let's see it. All right, cool. I'm just coming in. That's so disturbing on my end that I can't ... Yeah.

Arman Sedgwick-Billimoria:

That's so weird.

John Taylor:

That is weird.

Mathr de Leon:

Okay. There's something really interesting at play here. First of all, I want to clarify that while I am using clips from the recording sessions, these aren't individual tracks that have been rearranged or lined up in any way. What you're hearing is exactly as I heard it in real time. Secondly, we're all wired in via ethernet to try and harness the fastest internet connection available to us at the time. And we measured Arman as getting on average around 13 to 15 milliseconds of roundtrip latency, which is not perfect, but it's pretty low. According to our research, anything below 10 milliseconds ought to be low enough that the average user might not even notice it. But to achieve that, you'd have to be a lot closer. And since John and Arman are around 430 miles apart here, this is about as good as it's going to get. But that's not really the interesting part because there's something else in that recording that I find truly telling. You see, in total John, Arman and I spent four to five hours testing several apps designed for low latency music collaboration. And the reactions you just heard are overall fairly consistent with the rest of our recordings. With Arman typically saying it felt pretty great, or even that it sounded perfect to him. Whereas John on the other hand had thoughts ranging from, "That sounded okay," to, "What the hell is going on?" And that gap I think is where the real challenge lies in making this technology truly ubiquitous. And it helps us understand why our three core components, speed, accessibility, and feedback are so essential to the experience. But to get there, we should consider what might be contributing to this gap in the first place. One possible culprit, certainly the most obvious is a sizable difference in the roundtrip latency between them. As I mentioned, Arman's average was around 13 to 15 milliseconds. But for most of that session, John was sitting right around 27 to 29 milliseconds roundtrip latency. So, it could be that Arman is hearing John in what he perceives as near realtime, but John who's getting double the lag might be hearing something else altogether. And then there's the fact that Arman already spends much of his time working in this type of environment. Sure, John and I spend a lot of time on Zoom, but we're not typically collaborating musically or on anything that requires such critical timing. So it could be that Arman is simply more accustomed to the experience, meaning he's had more time to adapt. And that idea that we as human beings aren't all universally predisposed to the same pace of adaptation when it comes to new technologies, that's perhaps the biggest wild card in this whole endeavor. It's why Arman is on one side, like ...

Arman Sedgwick-Billimoria:

JT and I were in it the whole time.

Mathr de Leon:

And John is on the other like ...

John Taylor:

Whatever our latency is, it's so much that my brain wants to split in two.

Mathr de Leon:

And because we're each moving through and adapting to this new frontier at our own pace, perhaps that sense of latency is further compounded by the distance between our individual responses to the experience itself. Like maybe we're out of sync in more ways than one. This was my big, brilliant pitch to Amy, this idea that as the space between our physical interactions continues to grow, we as life forms will learn to adapt to our digital delay. And that advancements in wearables and immersive technologies may not just help us feel more connected, but may in fact aid in replicating the sensation of our realtime interactions and give us ...

Russ Gavin:

The same natural high.

Mathr de Leon:

That of course is Russ Gavin, Director of Bands at Stanford University and co-founder of JackTrip Labs. And as he tells it, the vibe online is very much alive.

Russ Gavin:

We have what I'm just going to call our house band, and I'm the world's worst bass player and we have a singer in Portland and a guitar player in LA. And the part of it that is so cool to me is I want to play with those guys in the same way I do like the other ensemble experiences that I get that are in person. And it's because, in that case, I enjoy them and we get to just do this music making thing, and it's just so real when we're playing along and we're making mistakes and we're laughing about our mistakes, and then we get it right the fifth time. And that cycle of human interaction that we get in that music space where, yeah, it's just fun and it's incredibly human. And again, the mistakes are part of the authenticity of me playing an A flat instead of an A and being like, "Sorry, guys." We get that and I mean, the dopamine is there. I'm here to attest to it. I get out of those sessions with the guys with the same natural high that I get when I'm doing in-person music.

Mathr de Leon:

It's so interesting because I can hear Amy Tobey, one of the co-hosts for Traceroute, I can hear her saying ... Amy Tobey: I don't buy it. I wonder if it was more that they were all just consuming their own product and had that emotional response.

Mathr de Leon:

Maybe

Russ Gavin:

Because that's ultimately what we're reaching for is some kind of emotional response. Singing in a choir, there's an emotional element to that that I crave, so I'm always looking for all the contributing factors in any situation.

Mathr de Leon:

Yeah, that's true.

Russ Gavin:

And one of those contributing factors if I'm using my own product, that's pretty exciting and we're already deep into collaboration at that point. The other part is we put most of the audio perception in our ears, but just like with smell and taste, you can't taste if you can't smell.

Mathr de Leon:

Exactly.

Russ Gavin:

I think there's a certain amount of our skeleton vibrating and feeling it through our whole nervous system that is part of why this is so hard over digital. And so I don't think it's ever really going to reach the experience of being in a room that the group of people singing together.

Mathr de Leon:

Okay. Amy's counterpoint is well taken. I mean, as a musician, I don't need research to tell me that a large and inexorable part of this experience is indeed physical. But you heard it yourself. The latency in that recording wasn't so bad as to make it unlistenable, and so it's hard for me ... PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:11:04]

Mathr de Leon:

It wasn't so bad as to make it unlistenable. And so it's hard for me to put aside the idea that if we can somehow learn to tolerate the latency, we might actually have a chance to recapture that elusive vibe. But here's the thing, learning to tolerate that latency is just as hard as it sounds. And while Russ might consider himself the worst bass player in the world, Alexander Carôt, developer of Soundjack and Co-founder of the Choir@Home project, and he too is well acquainted with the struggles of keeping time online. Alex Carôt: I'm not only in this domain as a tech person, I'm also in this domain as a bass player. And when I realized that that is, in many, many cases, especially on an international scope, not possible to perform naturally, I adapted to the situation that I can delay my own feedback to a certain amount. For example, if the latency is 20 milliseconds too high, I delay my own feedback sound by a certain amount of latency, and then again, I can play and nobody even notices. However, it is kind of hard to play with a self-delayed instrument, but that is one example for adapting to the situation. And I got used to it and it becomes normal for me, but I thought for a long time that people would automatically adapt, but they don't. This is what I realized in the pandemic, that most people even resist to adapt. So they don't want to adapt because they want the natural thing.

Mathr de Leon:

So interesting. Alex Carôt: And so again, I must repeat what I said, you have to distinguish between the two target groups of people willing to adapt, learning a new experience, which is in fact new, or others who just want to recreate the conventional use case.

Mathr de Leon:

All right, so what if we just take what Alex is saying at face value and imagine for a moment that this technology does attract two distinct user groups. In this scenario, one group is looking to recreate the experience they're accustomed to, and the advent of marginally user-friendly software deployed over low latency peer-to-peer networks is the next best thing to meeting up in person. It's not the real thing, but it's as close as they're going to get. And let's say the other group is in it for an altogether novel experience. They're not trying to replicate the feeling of collaborating in person, but rather they want to augment that feeling with something that allows them to connect in ways they might otherwise never have considered. In other words, this group is looking for something new, which begs the question, which group are we? Have we fallen prey to the illusion that this experience can or even should feel anything like its real world counterpart? Or do we simply need a bit more time, some trial and error until we find a way to balance between the effects of the latency and the satisfaction of being able to make this new mode of collaboration really work for us? Well, one thing I know for sure is that new can be scary. So in the meantime, what if we try and close the gap between what we're seeing and hearing in the virtual studio and what we're feeling and sensing in our own physical environment while engaging in this new space? What could we do to hack the scary new thing so it feels a little less scary, a little less new, until finally it's not. I actually talked with our tech emotionographer, Pamela Pavliscak about this very thing. I mean, what if we just lit some candles so they all have the same candles lit on either side or set the, like I said, the lighting the same way. Do you think any of that helps in situations like this?

Pamela Pavliscak:

I think it totally would, especially if it's a scent that's associated with it. If they're burning the same incense or scented candles on each side, I think that could help with it. Another thing I was thinking of technology-wise was heartbeats, because that's another way that we really get in to sync because when we're together, our breathing synchronizes, our steps synchronize, even our heartbeat can synchronize. And so I wonder with the magic that is wearables, if something like that could be added to an experience to help people feel the heartbeat of other people in the room.

Mathr de Leon:

Now, as you might imagine that magic already exists, in many forms actually. In fact, the global market for wearables specifically designed to capture and transmit biometric data is growing exponentially. And while we don't have an exact figure for the segment geared toward keeping loved ones connected via heartbeat, a quick search turns up enough results to paint a fairly optimistic portrait. But Pamela's right, contending with the haptics of heartbeats during an online jam session isn't exactly going to make things easier, unless our own heartbeats could somehow magically synchronize that is. Like, why not just slap on one of Soundbrenner's little smart metronomes, sync it to a universal clock and start jamming?

Florian Simmendinger:

Yeah, I would say this could become part of our roadmap in the future actually, because we do think connecting musicians remotely, it's a gap in the user experience.

Mathr de Leon:

That's Florian Simmendinger founder of Soundbrenner, and he, like everyone else we spoke to agrees that helping musicians stay connected remotely is a real opportunity for this industry, which is why his team has been thinking of ways that their wearable haptic devices might be seamlessly integrated into a remote collaboration workflow.

Florian Simmendinger:

The way our devices are programmed is actually the metronome is, let's say, calculated or running locally on your phone and also locally on our watches. So we're not sending a signal for every single vibration or something like that, we're just basically sending the rhythm it should run at, and then we make sure they are in sync in the face of the beat, it's what it's called. So that it's not just the same speed, but also each beat happens at the same time.

Mathr de Leon:

All right, the science of how many of our devices keep precise timing even without a network signal is largely thanks to this little thing called a crystal oscillator. Well, we don't have time for a whole field trip, but suffice to say it's this tiny electronic device, often only a few millimeters in size that uses the mechanical resonance of a vibrating quartz crystal to create a precise electric pulse. As Amy explains these crystals- Amy Tobey: Basically send a pulse 10,000 times a second or more.

Mathr de Leon:

And then that gets counted and you go like, "Oh, I hit a million." Amy Tobey: That means one second. And then you go to the next increment.

Mathr de Leon:

And that's how your phone's clock maintains time internally. They can experience a bit of drift over time, especially as they age, but the thing about modern cell phones is they all sync to GPS satellite clocks. Amy Tobey: So they should have the exact same time within some microseconds, and so if they could produce a sound-

Mathr de Leon:

Or a vibration. Amy Tobey: ... at the exact same time-

Mathr de Leon:

Couldn't two or more devices relying on the same network of GPS satellites use that signal to synchronize their vibrations, and couldn't we also use this as a way to test for latency in one of our jam sessions? Let's try something really quick. Pull up your phones and go to your alarms. I want you to set it for 1:11 and let's put it on the same alarm sound. So I'm going to choose... Do you have Xylophone? Speaker 1: Yeah, I do.

Mathr de Leon:

Okay, let's all do xylophone. Speaker 2: Okay, hold on.

Mathr de Leon:

Hit save. Speaker 1: Saved, it's dialed in.

Mathr de Leon:

And then hold it up to the mic. If it's possible- Speaker 2: [inaudible 00:19:14].

Mathr de Leon:

... I felt like I heard yours before mine. Speaker 2: It sounded like a multitrack. It sounded like when you layer guitars or layer vocals- Speaker 1: Yeah, it did. Speaker 2: There's just, yeah.

Mathr de Leon:

So this test is far from comprehensive, but as you heard, by removing the human layer altogether and relying solely on the magic of crystals and space stuff, the latency between John, Armand and I even at a distance of several hundred miles is borderline negligible. And when I pitched this to Florian, he said.

Florian Simmendinger:

We could definitely build a feature where musicians are able to do that through a video call or something like that, so that they would actually be perfectly in sync as they're playing music together.

Mathr de Leon:

But I have to wonder if we're not slipping back into that first camp again with the group that wants only to replicate an already familiar experience. So I asked Pamela what she thinks about it. Let's say that we could set kind of a very low level impulse from a wearable on your wrist, that you're getting almost like a metronome, subtle enough that your body's picking up on it and that's coming from the cloud and being delivered to both people roughly in the same time, and then they're using a low latency peer-to-peer network to see and hear one another. But yeah, maybe that's something.

Pamela Pavliscak:

Maybe.

Mathr de Leon:

Just that feeling that you're all sort of on a clock in a way. You're all connected to something that is shared.

Pamela Pavliscak:

Yeah. It's so interesting though because it feels like that's a lot of gear and a lot of setup to do what happens just normally when you're all in a room together. And maybe music itself has that magical power to connect us to each other, but also take us away and spark our imagination and feel it in our bodies too, if it's something that has strong rhythm, it's connected to memories. So just thinking of music and how complicated it is, but it's so easy for us as humans to kind of share that and for all that to just happen. So that's daunting to think about in a way, for technology, but also if we start thinking about all those elements, maybe we can at least get people a little bit closer.

Mathr de Leon:

I think for me, this is where we hit another wall and it's not a technological wall this time. I feel pretty confident that these platforms already work well enough to get the job done and will only get better with time and experimentation. And it seems entirely plausible that wearables and other immersive technologies will help fill the gaps and further augment these online experiences. But something about it feels almost... PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:22:04]

Mathr de Leon:

But something about it feels almost paradoxical in a way, like jumping through so many hoops in hopes of achieving an online facsimile of something that, as Pamela pointed out, already happens quite naturally in person. Like when two or more people are really vibing together in the same space at the same time, stuff happens, physiological stuff. Our bodies respond in ways we might not even be aware of at the time.

Russ Gavin:

There is a phenomenon that happens in choirs where the singers will start singing together and their hearts will sync.

Mathr de Leon:

Oh, wow. Like the rhythm of their heartbeats. Oh my God.

Russ Gavin:

But nobody's thinking about that, but they synchronize. Their bodies synchronize. That doesn't happen on Zoom.

Mathr de Leon:

What Amy's referring to here is a 2013 study published in a peer-reviewed academic journal called Frontiers in Psychology. It was part of a series on auditory cognitive neuroscience. And the paper's lead author, Dr. Bjorn Vikhoff is a Swedish researcher known for his interdisciplinary work at the intersection of music, neuroscience, and physiology. But for my money, what makes him extra fascinating is that his journey into the world of scientific research is marked by a transition from singer-songwriter to man who studies scientific aspects of music. Vikhoff's study revealed that when choir members get together and sing, their hearts start to beat as one. It's a phenomenon thought to be connected to the structured rhythmic nature of music. The idea is that singing, especially in a controlled manner like you would in a choir, involves specific breathing patterns, similar to those you might attempt when doing yoga. This type of breathing can enhance what's called respiratory sinus arrhythmia, which is linked to a healthy autonomic nervous system. This collective synchronization of heartbeats and breathing can enhance the sense of unity and cooperation and emotional connection among choir members, adding to the overall positive health effects of choir singing, both physically and physiologically. And this phenomenon, this spontaneous and often subconscious coordination of actions, emotions, thoughts, and physiological processes between two or more people is an important principle known as synchrony. It's thought to be so essential to the act of forming social bonds that even animals and some insects display a tendency to harmonize in this way. Actually, believe it or not, some inanimate objects can display a form of synchrony under certain conditions.

Russ Gavin:

In clock shops, when there's a lot of clocks, they experience synchrony on their own.

Mathr de Leon:

Interesting.

Russ Gavin:

I remember reading something about this. I have to go look it up.

Mathr de Leon:

I'm going to look that up too.

Russ Gavin:

There's something about a room full of clocks and the way they impact each other.

Mathr de Leon:

Why pendulum clocks mysteriously sync up.

Russ Gavin:

Yes. I can't believe I didn't think of this earlier. This is so cool for this episode. We could use the sound of a pendulum clock, right?

Mathr de Leon:

Yeah, totally.

Russ Gavin:

Everybody knows that one.

Mathr de Leon:

Okay. Okay. I know I said no field trips, but there are so many cool examples of synchrony in the world. We have to make a pit stop for at least one of them. I promise it will be worth it. So, back in the 17th century, Dutch scientist and inventor of the pendulum clock, Christian Huygens, observed that two clocks mounted on the same wall would eventually synchronize their pendulum swings. And while I'm sure this fascinated him to no end, Huygens and the rest of the world would go 350 years without fully understanding this phenomenon, which he referred to as a "odd kind of sympathy." In a peer-reviewed article published in 2015, two researchers from the University of Lisbon provided detailed analysis and modeling of the phenomenon based on their study of pendulum clocks hanging on an immobile wall. Henrique Oliveira and Luis Menlo found that each clock pendulum projects tiny forces onto the wall with each swing. These forces are transmitted through the wall as sound pulses or vibrations. When mounted on the same surface, the pulses travel through the wall from one clock to the other, resulting in a subtle continuous exchange of energy. Over time, this exchange influences the rhythm of each pendulum until they reach a state of equilibrium, at which point they become synchronized, swinging at the same rate and curiously, in opposite directions. Now, I realize that the process of biological or physiological synchrony is far more dynamic and multifaceted than the mechanical synchrony observed in objects like pendulum clocks. But you got to admit, the idea of two independent and asynchronous processes subtly influencing one another until they both operate in perfect rhythmic harmony, it's just such a perfect analogy for what it's really like to vibe with a fellow collaborator, especially in a musical setting. Let's say for the purpose of this story, that our vibe is some form of synchrony. Given the many forms that synchrony can take, perhaps what we're looking for here is less intrinsically physical, certainly less mechanical, maybe a bit more emotional, a bit more behavioral. What if it's a kind of social synchrony we're after? What if achieving that is far simpler than we're giving it credit for? Rather than worrying about achieving ultra low latency or creating total immersion or feeling each other's heartbeats in the moment, what if all we need is a space that's just comfortable enough to allow us freedom to improvise and build rapport? Maybe that feedback loop is the only thing we really need to borrow from our real-world interactions. If we dig a little deeper into this idea of social synchrony, research suggests that the coordination of behaviors among individuals within a social group can enhance feelings of similarity, groupishness, and trust, all essential parts of maintaining that good vibe. The challenge of fostering this kind of environment online is something that Janine Hacker, our researcher from the Choir@Home Project knows all too well.

Janine Hacker:

My job in this project is also to think of features that foster social interaction, but I must say that it really happened quite naturally. To some extent this is because of the technology. Maybe we're also lucky to have a group that was just engaged and we had some people who made some funny comments and somehow this create some interaction. Once we had established a routine with the technology and so on, which took some tests. Maybe the first rehearsal was still a bit chaotic, but later on it was actually quite well possible to concentrate on the essence, which means singing together. (Singing). I cannot say if my heartbeat was similar to another lab choir member's heartbeat. We would have needed another setup to actually measure this, but I can at least say that usually my mood was better after the rehearsal than before. Maybe that's very anecdotal, but I think as long as people are motivated and curious, it's actually possible. Maybe there will be other forms of artistic expression in the future that are supported by low-latency tools or maybe we will have choirs who have never met each other in the metaverse. Who knows what the future brings.

Russ Gavin:

I've been thinking more about this problem, and I do think that it will be adaptation as opposed to actually achieving the same experience. But I think it will be a lot of things we've innovated on where what we'll end up with is a different mode of performance entirely.

Mathr de Leon:

I think that's the idea. It's not about replicating the human experience, it's about adapting...

Russ Gavin:

I like that.

Mathr de Leon:

... to a new way.

Russ Gavin:

And then the feedbacks change. So we change the mode of performance where it's not necessarily achieving synchrony, but co-performance. If you change to that outlook, all of a sudden now there's a whole bunch of new options on the table.

Mathr de Leon:

This kind of brings us full circle in a way, because I think when we started this journey, I was so confident that we'd find a way to create what is essentially a digital proxy for the band's in-studio experience, and that they'd be so blown away by how well the technology worked, they might start to wonder why it took them so long to even consider it as a viable option. Seriously, I had this whole plan cooked up of going over to their studio, routing Arman's audio from Southern California through JackTrip or maybe Elk LIVE or SoundJack into the band's PA system, getting everybody on these little in-ear monitors and having a big screen up so they could see Arman jamming along. Then I'd route their audio back through the PA, over the network and back to Arman, and they would have this nice little feedback loop that might not be perfect, but would totally get the job done. In other words, I was squarely in that first camp, trying to replicate the experience. But throughout the process, I could feel myself start to shift, kind of like those pendulums. As Pamela predicted, it was in fact way too much gear and set up for something that should feel totally natural. As it turns out, I didn't need to expend so much energy. I could slow down a bit. In doing so, I noticed that in our recording sessions, both John and Arman also shifted. It really seemed as though they stopped worrying so much about whether or not they could continue working together, that they started having fun just playing around in the space. Before we even ended, they were already coming up with new ideas. Speaker 3: JT, we should write a funk song. I got a talk box.

Mathr de Leon:

No way. Speaker 3: Yeah. PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [00:33:04]

John Taylor:

No way.

Arman Sedgwick-Billimoria:

Yeah.

John Taylor:

Oh, yeah. [inaudible 00:33:05]. Oh, yeah.

Arman Sedgwick-Billimoria:

I think, if given the opportunity, if this was wave a magic wand, this is the dream, I'd be stoked. I think, with technology, there's obviously advantages and disadvantages, as we've talked about, whether that's vibe or actual technological issues, et cetera, but in short, I'm living the dream, so to speak,

Mathr de Leon:

What I'm hearing is, if this worked, not just with the band, but if this gave you access to even more opportunities, no sweat off your back.

Arman Sedgwick-Billimoria:

Absolutely. No sweat at all.

Mathr de Leon:

What about you, John? You've been playing in bands for many, many years, and what if this is the future? What if this is so successful, not this, but what if, in 10 years, peer-to-peer remote connection is so good that your brother doesn't even want to get together? All that to say there's a world in which this actually does work, but what is going to be lost after the world that you've grown up in, that world where that connection, that in-person, that excuse to get up and drive over to the studio and get together with everyone, what goes missing from that? What gets left behind?

John Taylor:

For me, it's really a matter of that I just won't leave it behind. This technology is fantastic and it's fantastic because it does allow us to retain Arman in the band, but there's sort of a twofold answer to this question because I look at it mostly as a tool. This ability to play remotely is a tool and we're going to use this tool to do things like write songs, rehearse, but what we're doing that for is to play live shows. Playing live shows is the greatest thing in the entire world. I've played in clubs where the only people in there were the servers. I played festivals where you could not see the end of the horizon of people, but if you're looking for that drug, which is that sense of connection, there is nothing like playing a small theater, like six to 800 people, and I live for that feeling. I live for that experience. I will use this technology as a tool to up my game, so that when I go and play that theater, it's a better experience for everybody, but I will never leave that experience behind. Speaker 4: [inaudible 00:35:41] on the mandolin.

Arman Sedgwick-Billimoria:

Couldn't agree more. Yeah. I definitely could see myself also utilizing this for remote sessions, not necessarily-

John Taylor:

Yeah. Absolutely. If you're working out song ideas, hey, I got this idea-

Arman Sedgwick-Billimoria:

Totally.

John Taylor:

...and here's sort of the chord structure and stuff, and you're just kind of back and forth-ing it, there's definitely a vibe when you're doing that.

Arman Sedgwick-Billimoria:

Totally.

John Taylor:

When the creative processes, and the collaborative process, is really in sync, I totally feel the vibe in that case. Ah, that works. That's good. We're doing something. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Arman Sedgwick-Billimoria:

Absolutely. Definitely.

John Taylor:

Yeah.

Mathr de Leon:

It's not the same vibe, but it's a vibe.

John Taylor:

Yes.

Arman Sedgwick-Billimoria:

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

John Taylor:

Yes.

Russ Gavin:

What happens with these kinds of technologies inevitably over time is people realize that by embracing them, you gain access to interactions, to people, to spaces that you otherwise might not have. Even people who fancy themselves musicians in high school, band, choir, orchestra, rock band, jazz band, string band, whatever you're into, by the time you get to your early 20s, most people have either slowed or stopped their music making. It is my belief that people don't stop making music because they want to, they stop making music because they stop having a place to do it easily and comfortably, and that, as these digital environments emerge, there's somebody who's favorite part of their week is playing trombone in their jazz band at XYZ university, and they're an accountant, and next year they're going to move three hours away to a city that needs them to be an accountant and they're going to wish they had a place to play trombone and, as we continue cultivating these technologies and the community around the technologies, that person is going to have a preloaded place to do that kind of music that gets them excited. It's my utopian vision that, eventually, people will know they don't have to stop playing and singing because they move to the next chapter of their life, that these technologies will allow them access to that part of themselves that, previously, society has said it's time to grow up.

John Taylor:

Okay, one, two. It goes back to that expression of friends are the family you choose. It allows us to choose from a larger pool of people to connect with and you can say, you know what? I want to work with that person, and so I will, even though they live in Poughkeepsie and I live in San Diego, because now I can. And, to me, it's an attempt to have a more vibe-based life because you're working with the people you really want to. The vibe will always be the most important thing and the platform is the tool that allows you to work with the people you want to vibe with wherever they are.

Arman Sedgwick-Billimoria:

That's great.

John Taylor:

That was pretty close.

Arman Sedgwick-Billimoria:

Yeah, I dug that. That was cool.

Mathr de Leon:

Traceroute is a podcast from Equinix and Stories Bureau. This episode was hosted by Amy Tobey and was produced by Mathr de Leon with help from Sadie Scott. It was edited by Joshua Ramsey with mixing sound design and original composition by Brett Vanderlaan, and additional mixing by Jeremy Tuttle. Our fact-checker is Ena Alvarado. Our staff includes Tim Balint, Suzie Falk, Lisa Harris, Alisa Manjarrez, Stephen Staver, Lixandra Urresta and Rebecca Woodward. Our theme song was composed by Ty Gibbons. You could check us out on X, of course, at Equinix Metal. You can check us out on YouTube at Equinix Developers. If you want to find transcripts and other info about the show, visit traceroutepodcast.com. We'll leave all of our links down in the show notes. I just want to give a shout-out to my friend and producer, John Taylor, and his band The Uninvited, especially their keyboard player, Arman, who will be staying, for the use of their music and for letting me tell part of their story. Also, a very special thank you to Janine and Alex from the Choir@Home Project, and their conductor Markus Rohregger, for the use of audio from their online lab choirs. If you like this story and you want to hear even more like it, drop us a rating on Spotify, a rating and review on Apple. Word of mouth is how other people find the show and ratings do really matter. I'm Mathr de Leon, senior producer for Traceroute, and John Taylor will be back in two weeks with a brand new story. Until then, thanks for listening. PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [00:41:10]