Many people have asked us why, of all the platforms, we use BandLab for our online rehearsing and teaching. We have explored other options and would like to share a brief rundown of our findings. Let us know if we’re missing anything (and no, we are not being paid by BandLab for this endorsement). We’d also love to hear from you about your favorite apps!
| App | Pros | Cons | Pricing |
| Acapella | Great for combining videos; fun; user-friendly | The audio isn’t easy to manipulate, and there is a monthly fee for videos over 1 minute as well as access to other features. | $9.99/month after a 7-day trial with additional add-ons listed here |
| BandLab | Has accessible Digital Audio Workstation features, and there are tools within the app to help rehearsing and practicing | It’s a little hard to organize a large number of tracks, but we have some workarounds. | Free |
| BandLab for Education | Great classroom layout for teaching and posting assignments | Tracks are not as easy to work with, and the biggest drawback is there is no app for mobile devices. | Free |
| Garage Band | Good Digital Audio Workstation features that are easy to use | It is only available for Mac users, and you can only share/ collaborate through iCloud. | Free |
| Jamulus and JamKazam | Offers connections to a common server so that musicians can play together at the same time.
Our impression is that these platforms work best with pop music and amplified instruments in particular |
The variations in latency and sound quality make it hard to experience detail, tempo fluctuation, interpretative decisions. | Free; pre-recorded JamKazam tracks cost $2 to $3. |
| Reaper | Awesome for professional audio manipulation | For new DAW users, it’s overkill, and you can’t share tracks with each other easily. | They ask for $60 for installation after a two-month trial. |
| Soundjack | Like Jamulus and JamKazam, it aims for simultaneous playing, though it works peer-to-peer vs. connection through a server | The lower the latency, the lower the sound quality, and it takes technical prowess to balance these factors. This article gives a great summary of how to do it. | Free |
| Soundtrap and Soundtrap for Education | Very similar to BandLab, and the features seem almost identical | BandLab has a larger community. | Free for Soundtrap with add-ons listed here. Soundtrap’s educational platform cost ranges from $0 to $18 monthly for personal use and $249 annually for an account that would support up to 50 users. |
So why BandLab? BandLab is a Digital Audio Workstation that has just enough audio manipulations to do what we want: we can choose whether or not to use a metronome, adjust volume levels, mute tracks, slow down/speed up tracks, and create as many projects as we want. Also, it’s fairly straightforward to use. After an initial learning curve, all four of us have been able to use it with ease. One small drawback is the difficulty with which we organize our tracks – we have to make “bands” for every piece we play – and sometimes we have to refresh our screen for a new track to show up. Overall we have made great musical progress as a quartet using this program, and our students found it satisfying as well. Lastly, if all of those benefits weren’t enough, a few months ago we spoke with two amazing people at BandLab, and their mission to break down the technical, geographic and creative barriers between creators, collaborators and community fit very closely with ours and the organization, Education for Happiness, that has supported us. We now feel even more compelled to support BandLab and to find growth as artists and collaborators through their platform.
This is so exciting! Can’t wait for the webinar on Saturday! Really interested in the Virtual Curriculum. I am anxious to learn all I can about working online. I fall into the demographic of persons with underlying conditions with CoVid-19. I will not be teaching in person any time soon, I have a recital that I have been preparing and would like to work with my accompanist online. Great work putting all this together for our music community. I, too, really appreciate Education for Happiness philosophy. I’ve been waiting a long time for this attitude to begin to prevail.
Thank you for your kind words, Susan!
Can you share info about the webinar Susan mentioned? Thanks to Bayberry’s blog, I had my student chamber groups using Bandlab for Educ at our virtual csmp and all groups were able to put music together-ages 9-19.
Laurie, that’s great! It sounds like your program had a lot of success this summer.
Here is the webinar info: https://phoenixensemble.com/event/virtual-chamber-music-webinar/