Recording rehearsals can be an important strategy in helping an ensemble improve. Recorded videos or audio files can help the individual members of the band work on improving their parts in between rehearsals. Recordings can also help ensemble/band leaders identify key areas for improvements and plan future rehearsals. Rehearsal recordings can also facilitate the composing of music by giving musicians the opportunity to create new parts by jamming along to the recorded rehearsal.
Zoom has some basic but effective recording features. You can either record a video (with audio) or just the audio. The resultant files take a short while to download after the session, and the formats are MP4 (Video and Audio) and M4A (for Audio Only). Zoom has a useful permissions feature that you may find useful. (see Related Resources).
Jamkazam offers similar features as Zoom but with some very useful additions depending on what your activities are. First off it records video (and audio) in the mpeg format and audio in .ogg and .wav formats. These files become available locally and can be shared with the Jamkazam community if you wish.
When recording, Jamkazam also creates individual audio files of all the instruments/voices used in the session which enables you to rebalance the tracks into a ‘polished’ mix afterward. It should be said that these files are high quality audio and are taken from each of the performers set-ups, and it takes a while for these high quality files to become available to everyone after the session.
Audio and video files can be large, but luckily storage space is quite cheaply available in the form of internal device drives and external drives. ‘Free’ cloud storage such as that provided by Dropbox, Google Drive and others are also an option, but space can fill up quickly. Consider keeping at least two copies of your work in separate locations including one which is remote from your computer in ‘the cloud’ or on an external drive.
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