Patent ID: 7405355

Claim:
A system for enabling a musician at one location to play a music instrument and have the played music recreated by a music instrument at another location, comprising: at least first and second end points, the first end point being connectable to the second end point through a data network, each end point comprising: a music instrument capable of transmitting music data representing music played on the instrument and capable of receiving music data representing music to be played on the instrument; a video conferencing system capable of exchanging video and audio information with the video conferencing system of another end point through the data network; and a music processing engine connected to the data network and to the music instrument and having a user interface, the music processing engine being operable to receive music data from the instrument at the end point and to timestamp the receipt of the music data with a clock synchronized with end points in the system, to transmit the received music data with the timestamp to another end point in the system via the data network, to receive from the data network music data including timestamps from another end point and to buffer the received music data for a selected delay period and in the order indicated by the timestamps in the received music data and to forward the ordered music data, after the selected delay period to the music instrument connected to the end point to play the music represented by the music data, wherein the selected delay period is defined by the musician at the end point with the user interface of the music processing engine.