Computer Help and Support

Several of my colleagues have put together performances online during the Covid-19 crisis. In each case, they multi-tracked the individual parts as you described. The pieces were recorded into ProTools to allow easy editing. In the end, the multi-track recordings (with accompanying videos) were mixed as usual.

Zoom doesn't work very well because their app prevents more than one person's microphone being active simultaneously. I tried playing piano remotely for a ballet class but it failed spectacularly because each time the teacher would comment, my piano part would disappear momentarily. This makes sense for a video conference because it prevents people from talking over one another. Makes music difficult, though.

Another friend tried using the multi-user version of Apple's FaceTime but that didn't work too well, either.

Overall, latency is a problem. That's when there's a split second delay between what you see and what you hear. Another friend who is a violinist pointed out that latency is not the only problem: because of the digital compression of the audio sent over the internet, the tone of instruments and voices is degraded.

A recording studio I work out of has been conducting sessions through Facebook but the client and the engineer have to keep Dropboxing one another the audio files which is time consuming.

So far, recording is possible but playing together live is very problematic.

Those are my experiences so far. If others have had better experiences, I'd love to hear them too!