NINJAM philosophy

Guy's SebNL here : i am thinking to completly stop jamming online. i feel like i am the onlyone doing the hard work for jam in peace. i have asked multible times for a jamtaba vst version with HQ audio. i have used over 20 deffernt jam systems just to get decent audio quality. Nobody does shit for promotion. i have spend alot of money time and energie in jam in peace in the hope the world would see what is possible.with online music.I have tried to build 1 connecting point for us all [nextcloud] but it is almost not being used. There are multible descord group and telegram groups. i truly dont understand why we all live in our own worlds and why we can not be waaaay more productive with eachother to create aaaamazing art online live streaming. This has so much potential , yet we all live in our own worlds ... hardly group video calls with motivated guy's. i see almost no reason anymore to continue jam in peace streaming.It is NOT abouth money , but fuckedup cancer audio quality in jamtaba vst and lack of motivation and promotion . Have a great day , Seb

Since I care about this topic, I wanted to write it here for easier reading. It would be a very long text to answer in chat, sorry for that.

I remember when I first met Seb at NINJAM, I contacted him and told him that he brought a great energy to the jams. I always appreciated his efforts and tried to support him in any way I could.

It was a collective philosophy put into practice. Since I consider NINJAM in this context, I try to produce collectively with everyone who strives for this.

But as we can see from the quote above, (as far as I can understand) there is a situation of frustration.

I have to start with our communication methods, in a sense this is actually the foundation because first of all, all communication starts in the NINJAM chat, but of course this is not a sufficient tool.

That's why I have said for a long time that there should be various ways for people who want to stay in touch to reach each other.

And I've tried to explain to everybody who wants to do something about it that these tools should be available and open to everybody.

It was already possible to communicate via discord, but it was not being used. Discord not open to everyone and it's complicated (relatively). 

So telegram offered a simpler alternative where you can read and follow from the outside without being a member and eventually write with a bot.

On Nextcloud, I said that people might not use it, so there shouldn't be a problem. I don't think we can agree that Nextcloud should be publicly available.

And the biggest problem is that one day it might suddenly shut down, which is a possibility even now :(

A public communication space (like telegrams) that is accessible and open to everyone is not like being in our own world, and I have always been against that.

So the fact that everyone is in their own world is something that I also complain about, but it is not possible to get everyone on the same page because our motivations and beliefs are fundamentally different. I wish this could be possible...

For example, here are the minimum requirements for me: To be public, for everyone from all over the world to be able to participate, and to be able to make it more organized over time and indirectly turn this spirit created by everyone playing in harmony in NINJAM into a live show that can be listened to by the audience.

That's what I've been working on for years, we've made a lot of progress compared to where we started, but my dear friend Seb, with whom I'm working on a YouTube channel as a collective, thinks that only he is doing the hard work for Jam in Peace. 

In a way, it's like dismissing my efforts. Yes, I don't spend as much time and energy as he does (especially in 2024 when I have much less time for music) but I'm still confident that I'm doing what needs to be done for the collective creation.

I think this will be better understood in time.

There are countless people in the NINJAM who have been working much longer and with much more effort.

I can't count everyone please don't be offended or upset, but I can summarize the people whose nicknames I remember right now as follows.

tbfx and slick have been in NINJAM regularly for more than 15 years I think, this reflects on us as ninbot. Just the fact that they are there is good enough, but they also have a functioning website and many improvements I don't know about. I should also mention Cyclops here.

javitozap and Jogito have worked on broadcasting the jams we do in their studios as a live show. They also have their own room and website. I should also mention Gaviland here.

vio in a sense wants to be only with music but he wants to keep the music he likes from all genres alive in NINJAM. i can say the same about bena.

Waii_D I totally agree with ideas about the spirit of NINJAM and how it can be experienced in public rooms. Together with Yan_Le_Rouge they always keep it alive.

Bernd is a great guy both technically and as a human, it's great to see him pushing for improvements and bringing all parties together.

jabah_guitabase's just the events he does show what we can do with NINJAM, the synergy is always amazing.

Schmi is also doing great things to combine real and online. I always admire the sound of his saxophone.

You may say that Satana666's hard tones may not suit to you, but he make music by listening. I think this is a must for everybody.

Denis is a great drummer who from the very beginning has been trying to make something together beyond language barriers (which is very important for the collective spirit), I hope we will have the opportunity to play together more.

Even though LeeAStone has not been with us in the last days, he has been working on what we need to play together.

I don't need to tell you about peaches :) always supportive.

polkadot/nasty always contributed positively to the flow in the rooms. It's all about the common spirit. Together with ratscro and Neo...

The value Bernie brings to NINJAM technically is amazing. 

When I used to play with graham_bass I considered him a rock star, imagine sharing music with a complete stranger for a long time.

BobertPlaysDrums "talking" with his drums is a great example of how we do it with a metronome wherever we are in the world.

I feel the same way about tatanca's drumming and the direction he gives to the flow of the music, it's all collective.

chox is a newcomer to NINJAM compared to the other guys but his holistic contribution to the flow of the music is incredible.

shavit_bass is who always steps in a positive direction for the common soul, I've played with him for a long time.

Matthias_Paradis is a legend, his sounds are amazing. I also had the opportunity to have a long correspondence with him (about NINJAM). 

M is an incredible guitarist but beyond his skills he responds to the spirit of the sound being played at that moment, it's all a collective spirit.

Arco is a very communicative, kind person. I think he always reflects the spirit of NINJAM with his lovely violin sound.

Pancho_Darbuka is a proof that we can find similar sounds in maybe two different parts of the world. He also participated in collective work.

Sergi is one where you can make improvements in terms of collective creation and visuals. From people who understand this general situation in NINJAM.

Defter is making improvements for JamTaba, worrying about whether the power will be cut off in the war conditions, but also listening to the flow of the music and making different additions (creatively), it's always great when NINJAM brings us together and we can talk about various topics.

As I said, I can't name everyone (the order is completely random) and of course I was able to observe and write about the people I interacted and communicated with the most, mostly the people I jammed with online.

So why am I telling this?

Because all this tells us a little bit about the philosophy of NINJAM. Everyone may have their own story but at the core we are united. And that is the flow of the music...

I'm also aware of the people that I've argued with over time or somehow don't want to play with me anymore or stay in touch. I don't think bad about any of them because music heals. When I see their great music being spread around the world through NINJAM, I think it's healing.

At the same time, all the names I've mentioned are somehow keeping this spirit alive in NINJAM's public rooms, open to everyone. So even if not everyone agrees or contributes to the collective work (streams or visuals), this doesn't change.

So, just like a living organism, first NINJAM needs to have basic life functions, then we will grow and multiply it as much as we can. For this, it is necessary not to give up.

Giving up in the short term will not help us, and it would also be a very disappointing action for the collective spirit. 

Jam in Peace is actually a great experimental work. I have always said it and I will always say it. It shows people who don't know each other but trust each other working together in a new world order where individualism has become a disease. 

But people can look at it from the outside and say that they are just doing it to promote themselves. This is what individual thinking requires.

Collective work, decision making and progress will always be very difficult and we will always have problems, if NINJAM is a crowded place these problems will be much bigger or the problems created by people will also grow.

So what I mean to say is that right now, of course it's not about money, but now everybody is only thinking about money. I write about this in Turkish music forums as well. This mentality is really disappointing and it prevents us from moving forward because it's a fundamental prejudice.

Can we overcome it with a collective YouTube channel? So far, no.

The reason is actually very clear because people don't believe and we don't have common motivation. It might not even be easy to decide on the logo of a channel collectively :)

On the other hand, I would like people who have reached a common spirit in the music in NINJAM to somehow be in the streams and develop it. That's why I cared about the primary owner cycle of the channel. It seemed like everyone involved in the channel could believe and trust in this way, but before it got to this stage, they might have thought that it wouldn't happen just by looking at the other one.

We can also come to the problem of everyone's own world from here, because for example, when we were playing in NINJAM, this was not a problem within the capacity of the rooms, that is, the music produced by everyone and the rooms could work separately, but when we moved this to a collective YouTube channel, we could not ensure that the stream produced by everyone could work on its own behalf.

Maybe YouTube's own structure is responsible for this because it doesn't have a structure suitable for a fully collective functioning, maybe if we had another website like YouTube but only for online jamming where everyone could stream, things could be very different, but whatever happens, whatever we do, there will be those who don't like it.

That's also a freedom, they may not like it, they may not want to participate or they may just want to hang out on their own, I don't begrudge anybody that.

I just wanted to explain the philosophy of NINJAM for the people we share a common spirit with. A lot of this came out of observations. If we don't share such a common philosophy, if one day it turns out that I'm the only one who misunderstood all this, I'll stop playing in NINJAM. 

Until that day I will continue to play and produce collectively...