Music Makers ONLINE!!

Click on the below link and follow the steps to join. You can join from a computer, phone or tablet, computer has best audio usually. See tips below. To join Zoom Meeting

https://zoom.us/j/342195107?pwd=sDziLcXI-KlmCcnAc3cRWA

Meeting ID: 342 195 107
Password: musicmaker

A lovely session of music and song in a relaxed and supportive environment. All levels of musician and singer welcome. You can come and sing or play one song or just come and listen to the other members. Great way to build up your playing skills and build up your confidence.

To maintain our zoom and music maker accounts we request a €2 contribution. It is difficult to collect money for the online events so we are suggesting that if possible we could use revolut to transfer the €2 if you don't have an account I'm sure you know someone who could do the transaction for you. The host will identify the Revolut number on the night. If you don't have access to revolut it doesn't matter we will look at some other way to collect the €2 euro.

Zoom is not optimized for music, but we have tested it and think it's decent enough for a get together in the absence of a face to face meeting. Voice is better than instrument.

Zoom is pretty simple to get into and use. You don't need an account but if you want to test it out beforehand, you can get a free one by searching for it where you get your apps or downloading it on the web.

A few simple guidelines to ensure it runs smoothly.

1. Stay on mute while someone else is playing or singing. You can join in ONLY if you are on mute, because the delay over the internet does not allow simultaneous playing online.

2. When you are playing, stay as close to your device's microphone as possible for best results.

3. There are two views - Gallery view and Active Speaker view. Active speaker will put the video on the person singing, Gallery view will show everyone. You may have to search a bit to find each view, it is different on each device.

4. You can mute your audio and/or your video.

The host reserves the right to mute anyone whose line is causing audio interference.

5. There is an interesting option to record yourself first and then share it - the quality will be better.

In Zoom there's an icon called "Share Content", if you click that you get the option to share files on you Google Drive etc. I've just tried it out and it allows you to throw up pre-recorded audio and/or video files. These replace your video picture while they play. When they finish just hit the share content icon again and your video image comes back. So this might be an option for anyone to pre-recrord (good quality), load onto Google Drive, join a Zoom session and, when it comes to their turn, introduce their song and share the pre-recorded song from G Drive.

6. As mentioned above, Zoom is optimised for voice rather than music so it actually tries to filter out music thinking that it's background noise but that filter can be disabled but only on Windows and macOS as follows:

On the Zoom Home page on you laptop:
Click on 'Settings' (top right)
Then click on 'Audio' (left pane)
Then click 'Advanced' (bottom right)
Then tick the box at the top of the screen 'Show in-meeting option to "Enable Original Sound" from microphones'

Then, when you're on a call, a toggle switch appears at the top left of your screen "Turn on Original Sound".
Click that - it changes to "Turn off Original Sound" and you're done.

Preferred setup for anyone with an instrument might thus be:

1. Windows or macOS
2. Turn on Original Sound
3. Direct connect to router (rather than Wi-Fi)
   Even better if you have a microphone connected via an audio interface device to your laptop/PC.

7. Don't forget your drink!