Two sets of musicians are hailing a world first after playing the first notes on a collaborative album that will be recorded at the same time - 3,000 miles apart.
It is thought to be the first time ever that two sets of musicians will record music at the same time without ever leaving their respective countries.
An academic team from Edinburgh Napier has linked up with Berklee College of Music in Boston, USA, to record an album.
They are using an advanced audio-visual streaming technology called LOLA and the cloud-based features of audio software Pro Tools.
The band can see each other by being projected onto large glass panels in both studios.
Despite being 3,000 miles away from each other, the time difference is only 40 milliseconds which compares favourably to the average sound lag of 500 milliseconds for a regular Skype call.
The sound qualities are almost identical despite the lag.
The band has written a number of songs aimed at pushing the capabilities of LOLA, with many featuring intricate parts with a view to challenging the system.
Lecturer Dr Zack Moir, who plays the sax, said: “It has been a privilege to be involved with this project and it’s fantastic to play a role in taking what we can do with LOLA to the next step."
“Being part of a group involved in real-time interactive music-making, and recording tracks with players on either side of the Atlantic Ocean is something we could never had imagined doing just a couple of years ago.
“The potential of this system for use in the future for live gigs and performances across the world is incredibly exciting.”
Dr Joe Bennett of Berklee College plays guitar in the band and said that they had to calculate tempos and styles that would work for the recording.
He said: “We did some math in advance to figure out what the latency would be, and tried to guess the tempos and styles that would work for the session.
“Some of the tunes had a slow jazz swing, and others had a deliberately loose non-rhythmic feel.
“In the Boston studio, we tried a simple mic’d up acoustic guitar and also a heavily processed electric guitar.
“The tunes that worked best, for me, were the ambient soundscapes, where we were listening as much for texture as rhythmic pulse.
“But we also managed some funky rhythmic patterns, and the tech team managed to set up the monitoring and streaming in such a way that the sax could play exactly in time with the guitar.”
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