NINJAM (Novel Intervallic Network Jamming Architecture for Music) is another way of making music collaboratively (a fancy word for “in a group”) over the Internet. This looks to run as a separate application — route audio through it, and it collects the other participants’ audio and allows you to mix it in real time. I like the way it handles network latency — instead of trying to minimise it, NINJAM automatically increases the delay to the nearest whole measure. So, as the website says, “when you play through an interval, you’re playing along with the previous interval of everybody else, and they’re playing along with your previous interval. If this sounds pretty bizarre, it sort of is, until you get used to it, then it becomes pretty natural. In many ways, it can be more forgiving than a normal jam, because mistakes propagate differently.”

This is a very different approach to something like VSTunnel. It’s weirder (which is good), and probably slightly less flexible. On the other hand, it’s available for Linux as well as MacWindows, and… it’s free.

NINJAM is probably better for live improvisation rather than highly polished pop songs. And it sounds like a lot of fun “Part tool, part toy, NINJAM is designed with an emphasis on musical experimentation and expression.” And isn’t that what it’s all about?