Jody Kruskal

We are looking forward to presenting our next show for you on Sunday July 12th at 3:30 pm US EDT (UK time: 8:30 pm). We will be playing this live duet on JamKazam and streaming via YouTube for your listening and viewing pleasure. Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-H3rq62pWg&feature=youtu.be Cindy Harris is a master of the autoharp which sounds so melodious in combination with my concertina playing. Expect traditional American old-time reels, British gems and a few songs, all in the key of JamKazam. See you on Sunday! Cheers,

Cool! Beautiful playing Anne.

No denying it, this concert was rife with problems. During our hour long soundcheck everything was going great. Then, two min. before showtime, Cindy crashed in Jamkazam and had to set up a new Youtube stream. She posted the new URL on the old stream as a visual and in chat there. An amazing 25 folks managed to follow us into the new youtube link and we performed the concert starting only 15 min. late. At the time, the concert sounded OK to us two performers, but in listening back to the youtube recording (that you can hear above, thanks to David Barnert) we realized that the transmission sound quality was very poor with continuous random distortion and artifacts. Our audience complained a bit about that in chat, but I like to think that our musicianship shone brightly through that dirty window and a grand time was had by all despite the audio problems. Cindy not only plays autoharp but she loves digging her nerdy teeth into this kind of challenge. We are both working out our future plans with a tech overhaul that will hopefully lead to a better concert experience in the future. We hope to present our new and improved concert format, tentatively scheduled for Sunday, July 12 at 3:30 pm EDT (8 in the UK). Wish us luck! There are a thousand ways to mess up.

Looking forward to presenting our show for you on Sunday June 21 at 3:30 pm (UK time 8:30 pm). We will be streaming our live duet concert via YouTube for your listening and viewing pleasure. Here's the link: Never mind the odd graphic. A story best untold. Cindy Harris is a master of the autoharp which sounds so melodious in combination with my concertina playing. Expect jigs, reels, polkas and a few songs all played live, in the key of JamKazam. See you Sunday!

Some of you may have been following the “Playing together across an internet connection“ conversation: https://www.concertina.net/forums/index.php?/topic/22128-playing-together-across-an-internet-connection/page/4/&tab=comments#comment-204259 Autoharp wizard Cindy Harris and I have figured how to move forward for our next duo concert. We plan to perform in real time together on Jam Kazam and stream it live onto your device via Youtube. Join us on Sunday, June 21st at 3:30 (US Eastern time, that's 8:30 pm in the UK) to see and hear how it’s done. No magic or tricks, actual simultaneous playing, though Cindy and I live 400 miles apart. It can be done! Mark your calendars. More info to follow.

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Over the last two months, Jody Kruskal and Cindy Harris have been pursuing the Holy Grail of physically distanced musicians: playing together over the internet. Now, after many late nights and hours of practice on Jam Kazam, you are invited to witness a concert of delightful duets and songs from far and wide performed on concertina and autoharp. You're sure to be delighted and entertained as they share their lag-defying musical magic in front of a live audience on Zoom. Bring an instrument and play along or sing along -- we won't hear you, but that won't diminish your joy! Join the live Zoom audience here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89784339917?pwd=WndwcEVDSEVOeCtDNkRoL2gzL243QT09. In addition, the concert will also be streamed live to Cindy's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CindyHarrisAutoharp/live, This event starts at 8:30 in the evening, England time (3:30pm in the afternoon US EDT). Though attendance is free, tips will be gratefully accepted! Looking forward to seeing many of you on Sunday. Cindy & Jody P.S. Last Sunday’s Jody Kruskal - Zoom time, fun time, old-time concert event #2 recording can be linked to here: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/xc8ldqPP9lJLRbPz1VrUdKouR5r1T6a8hyVKqacJzRoZC9XwRhGAyqjDb5KISVwT - Password: 9m%1=%xt

Many of my friends and fans attended last Sunday’s Jody Kruskal - Zoom time, fun time, old-time concert event #2. If you were not able to make it, you can still catch the show here, but watch soon, as I’m not sure how long this link will last: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/xc8ldqPP9lJLRbPz1VrUdKouR5r1T6a8hyVKqacJzRoZC9XwRhGAyqjDb5KISVwT - Password: 9m%1=%xt We had a great time with viewers from all over the globe including the US, England, Scotland, Cornwall, Denmark and Australia. I sang songs with concertina and autoharp and played tunes. We all had a chat. What a pleasure! Reserve next Sunday, June 7 (3:30 pm US time, that's 8:30 in the evening for you UK folks) for the next concert with autoharpist Cindy Harris. More info to follow.

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Dear Folks, I had such a blast presenting my first web-based zoom solo concert last Saturday with 30 or so attending from the US and UK as part of the virtual Black Creek Old-Time Festival. Many of you missed that live show and asked me to produce another one. Here it is... Jody Kruskal's Zoom time, fun time, old-time concert event #2 Sunday, May 31st from 3:00 to 4:00, US eastern standard time (that’s starting at 8 in the evening, UK time). Here’s the Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81083231337 One tap mobile +16465588656,,81083231337# US (New York) +13126266799,,81083231337# US (Chicago) Dial by your location +1 646 558 8656 US (New York) +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) +1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown) +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) +1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose) Meeting ID: 810 8323 1337 Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kdV9ugRzlN This event is free and I hope you enjoy it. If you do... consider tipping me at Paypal.com in my name. The tip jar is open and any amount is very welcome, just go there and do it. The more I get, the more time I will spend producing future concerts. If you like what I do, then it’s really a win win deal, so dig deep and show me some love... the kind I can buy groceries with. Just like my successful concert #1, I plan to broadcast selections of prerecorded music and play along, interspersed with song and tune selections that are 100% live performance. You are all welcome to play along too (muted of course) and it’s great for everyone to see you all participating with your instruments and smiling faces... singing and playing along. So please do turn on your video and be a part of the show. There will be some brief time to chat as well. Please pass this on to any friends you like, but do not share this link on facebook, twitter or general social media. I don’t want to get Zoom Bombed. See you Sunday!

Hi Andrew Collins, Glad to see that there are others experimenting with JK. Carry on! Tonight, my Brooklyn family had another amazing and delicious feast. After dinner I went downstairs to my studio and texted autoharpist Cindy Harris to see if she wanted to play... and the answer was yes, in 15 min. So I opened up JK and carefully reconfigured my audio settings and then my computer sample rates in (Mac) Audio MIDI Setup to be sure that I was at my best. I invited Cindy to join my session and soon she did. We spent some time setting our levels in JK for both voice and our instruments until everything sounded good. I’m playing Anglo concertina through my pedal board which gives me added expression. What fun we had playing together on JK tonight! Both of us were at a respectable 10+ ms latency and the connection was exceedingly good. Almost as good as real face to face playing even though I’m in Brooklyn and she’s in Pittsburg, about 400 miles away. Though it was good, it was not perfect. One interesting thing about JK, is that as we played, our personal perception of time was not quite dead steady but strayed slightly with minute fluctuations that required compensation in a musical way. I was constantly negotiating between the urge to forge ahead and lead... and the need to hold back and respond. To play together, we really had to listen in a very concentrated way and be willing to react in kind to these slight but constant adjustments in the tempo. This happens in normal playing too, but not so much. We discussed this and agreed that there was a special skill needed to play successfully in JK. A skill that can be learned and soon becomes natural and habitual. A muscle that when exercised, becomes strong and operates without conscious effort. A muscle that is deeply involved in negotiating this un-natural and un-musical ebb and flow of time. For this amazing session that Cindy and I had, we were close enough in time with our duo to be workable though, and once you realize that you each have to share in the chore of compensating by pushing the tempo ahead and not be thrown off too much by the inevitable latency and slight but persistent delay, well, then it all worked out pretty well. Both of us took responsibility for keeping up the tempo and the music flowed well with surprising and satisfying results. Following and leading became one. Delicious music with Cindy was played including interaction and sensitivity. We were playing slow versions of lots of trad, tunes including: Black Nag, The Rights of Man, Jaybird, Winder Slide, a selection of jigs and then we even spent time teaching each other unfamiliar tunes with success! I think with pleasure of this ability to actually play with my buddy Cindy who lives so far away. Without this emergency, I never would have even tried JK. Discovering the power of the amazing JK is one of the few upsides to this horribly destructive pandemic.

I had a nice JK session today with concertina player Graham from Chipping Camden, UK. It was his first JK session and it went well. As slow tempos work best for trad. tunes, we had some success playing waltzes. Chatting between tunes was a pleasure as it's rare that I get to hang out with these old friends in the Cotswalds. If Graham were to JK with folks closer to him, I bet that the latency issues we encountered would be greatly reduced. Although is is possible to have latency-free jams with folks from far away... best results are often achieved between folks who are really near each other.

Not at all. Here is how I think it worked. Take Arkansas Traveler for instance. It's mostly eighth notes with a few quarters scattered about. Whenever I got to a quarter note, it was tempting to play two eighths. That's all. Of course I do that at at proper speed too. It's just that at half speed there was twice as much time to come up with interesting lines that would fill in the time. It's fun to turn a reel into an air, and quite beautiful too!

Playing slow Clearly, this is the way to go on JamKazam. I just had another session with my playing friend Cindy and the two of us confirmed what we already knew. Slow jams are better on JK. Arkansas Traveler at a snails pace sounded really good, and so delightfully jaunty!. Same with Coleman's March and the other slow tunes we were playing. It seems that the disjointed and slowing down effects of latency are reduced proportional to the tempo you play. Our very slow performance tempos left room for improvisation and filling in the eighth notes in a most delightful and free manner. At these ultra slow tempos that we were playing, latency issues disappeared and real interactive music could be made. We were responding to each other in the normal way musicians do. Great music tonight, though played quite slowly! None of the other platforms, either Zoom or Google Meet or Skype or whatever could provide this interactive interface. JamKazam is clearly the way to play together, even with all of its limitations.

Well, finally. A real solid trad. jam on JamKazam. My friend Cindy Harris on autoharp joined me for a private duo session. We played the English “Three Rusty Swords” aka “The Rusty Gulley”. Then a few American tunes: “Amelia’s Waltz” and the “Hog Trough Reel”. Cindy was playing from Pittsburg and me from NYC. It was not ideal. There were cut-outs and latency issues and when we were playing ok, the slower tunes sounded best. We both had a good time though and felt like we had actually played together.