Patriarch
Many things can be accomplished over the Internet today.
But band practice? Fuhgeddaboutit!
Musicians will tell you that the lag on the so-called digital superhighway makes band practice over the Web seem more like sitting on the Santa Monica Freeway in rush hour.
Here's how one old-school rock group, Patriarch, made it work using new school optical fiber. Below is the story of a band that long ago was on the verge of breaking. Instead, they broke up. In that sense, their tale is similar to hundreds of other aspiring bands that never made it.
Unlike most other dissolved bands, however, Patriarch found a way to get back together after 27 years to play a full house in their hometown in Kansas City, KS. Even though the five members were scattered across the country with jobs and families, they practiced together in real time over Google's high-speed fiber network (Google was a sponsor of the project, along with StagePro, which donated much of the equipment the band used for their reunion.)
The video above documents how it all worked, giving a glimpse of how musicians could more conveniently practice in a few years' time.