Wham! Bam! Worldwide jam!

It's pretty rad and out now, eJamming AUDiiO lets musicians jam together online in real time. That means a guitarist in Nigeria, bassist in Germany, DJ in Canada, drummer in Russia, vocalist in Thailand, flute player in Brazil (OK, you get the point yes?) can meet online, form a band, and start playing together immediately like a United Nations supergroup! But does it come with an online translator as well? How do you say "that sounded like crap, you're fired" in Thai?

Seriously though, you can also record sessions, exchange locally recorded tracks and simultaneously record audio and MIDI, meaning you can mix "real instruments" with "digital instruments" like synthesizers and drum machines. From their demo video, it doesn't sound that bad at all.

Having said this, the programme (right) imposes a delay on each musician's instrument according to bandwidth of the user and distance between users. So your proximity to other players and upload speed will determine how much delay there is. A free to download eJamming AUDiiO beta version has been running for about a month, and around 2,700 musicians in 99 countries have signed up already. The subscription service will start in a few weeks for around US$15 per month, so get cracking and check out for free if rocking with Egyptians or Laotians is your kind of thing. I probably will, and apparently you get a discount on subscription if you provide feedback, so it's just a matter of writing "those Bulgarians didn't like my sound... I'm devastated!" and you're through... BOOM!

To start with, it's best to avoid playing with musicians more than 5,000km away, says eJamming. For all those Bolivians who want to hook it up straight away in Bangladesh, well you'll just have to wait...

Musigy also have been running online collaborations, including some pretty innovative shows at Ukraine's Koktebel Jazz Festival 2006 (right). Their "Jazz @ the Speed of Light" project included British sax star George Haslam playing in Oxford live with Russian sax legend Alexey Kozlov, who was on stage at the Koktebel Jazz Festival. Check out a TV clip on it here.

It's worth having a look at the Russian TV clip on the festival as well, though unless you speak Russian, you really have no hope of comprehending anything that's going on... Anyway, it's not my fault you don't speak Russian! One of the main attractions of this clip is the newscaster's sweet tan (above), I didn't realize it was such a sunny country, I gotta go there and get me some nice bronzing... oh baby!