Online band rehearsal: rehearse together from home
Getting a band together in one room is hard. Someone lives across town, someone has the kids tonight, the rehearsal space is booked. With Solocontutti your band can rehearse online, each player at home, playing together in real time: you hear each other while you play, not a few seconds later like on a video call.
Why video calls don't work for rehearsing
Video-call apps are built for talking. They delay the sound, filter out anything that isn't speech, and let only one person be heard at a time. That's fine for a meeting, but it makes playing in time impossible. Solocontutti is built the other way round: it's an audio-first app, designed for minimal delay and high-quality sound, with everyone audible at once.
How much delay is acceptable?
Musicians are used to some delay without noticing it: sound travels about a metre every 3 milliseconds, so on a big stage players hear each other tens of milliseconds late. Delays of more than about 100ms are clearly audible and make playing together hard; under 50ms is the design goal for online music software. How close you get depends on your sound card, your internet connection and the distance between players. Our guide to latency explains where the delay comes from and how to keep it low.
What you need
- A Mac, a Windows PC or an iPhone/iPad with the free Solocontutti app (download it here).
- Headphones, so the sound of the others doesn't feed back into your microphone. Use wired headphones: Bluetooth adds a lot of delay.
- A wired internet connection if at all possible. WiFi works, but it is less reliable and adds delay.
- Your instrument and a microphone or audio interface. Electronic instruments and DAWs can be connected with the free Solocontutti plugin.
See what equipment you need for more detail.
Setting up a rehearsal
- Everyone installs the app. The first time it starts, a wizard helps you set up your sound.
- One player clicks "Start" to start a session and sends the session code to the rest of the band.
- The others click "Join" and enter the code. Up to 12 players can be in one session.
- Each player sets up their own mix, so the drummer can hear more bass and the singer more keys.
The Quick Start walks you through it step by step.
Useful for rehearsing
- A shared metronome that is synchronised for everyone in the session.
- Backing tracks that the whole band hears at the same time.
- Recording of the session, so you can listen back afterwards.
- Video, so you can see each other's cues (starting a video link needs a Pro subscription).
What musicians say
“The sound quality is great, but even more important: there is no audible delay, so you can play together perfectly. Of course nothing beats making music together in one room, but this app comes very close!”
“I have found the sound quality, latency and freedom from glitches historically to be far superior to Jamulus and Jamkazam.”
What it costs
Solocontutti is free to use, as long as at least one player in the session has a subscription, which is needed to start a session. Subscriptions start at €4.99 a month in the EU, so for a whole band that is one subscription. See pricing for what each level includes.
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