As someone who has never collaborated with another musician, I'm curious to know your experience. What did the workflows look like? Did you pass .wav files back and forth, or did you stick to one project? What worked or didn't work? Any advice?
I collaborated with a few people. I'll comment on some.
LucidShadowDreamer
I collaborated with LSD twice. We used different DAWs but had the same libraries so we shared midi files, in some cases with midi cc data. In both cases he provided a piano sketch to build a composition upon. That really helped us get on the same page. Naturally, we had some stylistic differences during the composition stage; we communicated about what we liked and disliked and worked to resolve each other's problems to the extent we were comfortable with. We surprised each other with where we took the compositions, but partly thanks to the sketch, the final results were cohesive and effectively told the stories we envisioned.
Ectibot
We both used FL Studio and Native Instruments libraries at the time, so we shared a project file. This was definitely the smoothest collaboration effort I've experienced. I came up with the idea for the song's story, Ectibot began the composition with a nostalgic, romantic chord progression and motif and choose the most important instruments. I followed his lead and built upon his foundational elements to compose more sections. I sent the track back to him after I reached the end of the first climax, and he composed new sections that perfectly matched the vibe I had established thus far.
What I take from these examples is that when collaborating, it's important to work with a strong foundation that gives a song its identity. It also helps if each person involved completes their assigned sections so that the others have more cues to work with as they compose new sections.
I have different workflows for collabs and I sometimes struggle with this, but sometimes I get by. Examples of getting by:
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@Spadezer (Carol of the Drum)
This was recordings only, and it was a bit difficult. I did a tempo envelope over a metronome click, bounced that, and recorded the drums first, and then wrote a MIDI of the sung parts and sent it to him. He sang them to the best of his ability, and I sang what I could, and then he sent his WAVs to me (at a higher sample rate than mine IIRC) and then I mixed them together.
A straightforward process perhaps, if my project file were not giving me gremlins three times over.
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@Phyrnna (A Breeze From Home, Estsvius)
Phyrnna directed me over the feel of A Breeze From Home, and the feelings behind Estavius' intended lyrics.
For A Breeze From Home I exported every part as WAV — we were using substantially different versions of FL; I was using FL 11 and a plugin no longer supported by Phyrnna's FL 20. She mixed them together, optimising them for all devices as this was going to feature in Epic Battle Fantasy 5, playable on both PC and mobile (eventually).
By the time I did the vocal version of Estavius, I had switched to FL 20, but the Export Zipped Loop Package function wasn't working, which meant that I needed to send over the FLP, as well as the sounds I used. Both were a hassle workflow wise, and not on her part — but on mine. Again, she mixed these memorably that it sounded like a live folk session. ☺️
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@AkioDaku, Juan D. Cruz, The Just Numbers (A Stroll Down St Pancras)
Once again, this was my arrangement. With it being my own composition I could direct AkioDaku, and TJN guitarist Greg Slater, as to what sort of feel I was going for. ("Melodic play is fine in these sections," I would say to AkioDaku for example.)
Juan put in his violin recordings after coming across the piece for the first time, mere days before it was due for release. He was moved to play, and I let him have it.
As Akio and Juan use different DAWs from me, they sent WAVs over. Greg is in my social bubble so he came to mine, plugged the Les Paul into my 2i2, and played.
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Now all these examples are my own arrangements or compositions, I've not co-composed with anyone yet.
I'm due to collaborate with Phy again soon, and @JohnMontoya as well. Perhaps I can report different workflows next time.
At 1/25/21 07:40 PM, AceMantra wrote: As someone who has never collaborated with another musician, I'm curious to know your experience. What did the workflows look like? Did you pass .wav files back and forth, or did you stick to one project? What worked or didn't work? Any advice?
You first have to talk about different factors (the DAW and Plugins you have for example) in order to organize the collab.
Personally, when I'm working with someone, I like to edit the project file itself. So in my case, me and my collaborator must have the same version of FL Studio.
If you don't have the same version or the same DAW, something many people do is sending the WAV files of your work to each other progressively. It's pretty hard at first but you get used to it.
I don't think I have to go in details and explain every little things as Everratic explained it really well :)
Imagine being french
I've usually ended up pulling the hefty workload most of the time in the past and just ask the collab partner to contribute/build up their specific sections in WAV exports (after throwing across technical info first) while I'm dealing with everything else.
More work for me, but I prefer it that way. There was that CHIPS special round a couple years back now where I ended up taking control over the entire group project as nothing got done in 2 weeks and someone had to step up and get shit organised on a time limit. I pulled a 30-35ish hour sleepless marathon getting the first 3 sections of 5 sorted, then getting whoever was still down for doing work on it to get sections 4/5 sorted and another one of the top lads to help glitch-up section 3.
I don't mind collaborating if I have the time and it's something I like the idea of doing, but assume in advance that I'm probably going to take up the majority of duties with it and also the creative control over the project haha
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I've never collab'd before. Kinda want to try it. My bro is supposed to lay down some drums over one of my existing pieces, but he's always busy so. I don't know, I like to have control, not sure how good I'd be in a collab but I'm willing to give it a shot at least once.
At 1/29/21 04:47 PM, cyan11 wrote: I've never collab'd before. Kinda want to try it. My bro is supposed to lay down some drums over one of my existing pieces, but he's always busy so. I don't know, I like to have control, not sure how good I'd be in a collab but I'm willing to give it a shot at least once.
Wondering if two people who are used to having control over the direction of a collab might balance each other out.
Yeah, I'm talking you and me. Howzzat?
At 1/29/21 05:05 PM, Troisnyx wrote:At 1/29/21 04:47 PM, cyan11 wrote: I've never collab'd before. Kinda want to try it. My bro is supposed to lay down some drums over one of my existing pieces, but he's always busy so. I don't know, I like to have control, not sure how good I'd be in a collab but I'm willing to give it a shot at least once.Wondering if two people who are used to having control over the direction of a collab might balance each other out.
Yeah, I'm talking you and me. Howzzat?
Sure, I'm game! Not sure how we go about this..... start from scratch? go back to existing work and make a new version? I'm down for whatever.
At 1/29/21 05:08 PM, cyan11 wrote:At 1/29/21 05:05 PM, Troisnyx wrote:Sure, I'm game! Not sure how we go about this..... start from scratch? go back to existing work and make a new version? I'm down for whatever.At 1/29/21 04:47 PM, cyan11 wrote: I've never collab'd before. Kinda want to try it. My bro is supposed to lay down some drums over one of my existing pieces, but he's always busy so. I don't know, I like to have control, not sure how good I'd be in a collab but I'm willing to give it a shot at least once.Wondering if two people who are used to having control over the direction of a collab might balance each other out.
Yeah, I'm talking you and me. Howzzat?
Let's take this to PMs, or Discord -- whichever you prefer!
If you read this, you get a virtual cookie
I stopped collabing long ago. It's just something that never worked for me.
meh
I'm pretty new with music collab myself and wondered how it's done because I had collab'd in art (namely pixelart) before.
MIDI files. In the collab projects with @LucidShadowDreamer and @Samulis, what we did was exchanging rendered WIPs in MP3, and when we need to exchange ideas for our part we plug the MIDI into our own DAW, and so on. For static renders, we use WAV or sometime OGG because my internet back then was super potato.
For Samulis collabs, he was the person to finalize the projects. While with LSD, we took our turns to finalize the projects.
At 2/27/21 06:59 PM, Zoonotist wrote: MIDI files. In the collab projects with @LucidShadowDreamer and @Samulis, what we did was exchanging rendered WIPs in MP3, and when we need to exchange ideas for our part we plug the MIDI into our own DAW, and so on. For static renders, we use WAV or sometime OGG because my internet back then was super potato.
For Samulis collabs, he was the person to finalize the projects. While with LSD, we took our turns to finalize the projects.
Yeah, start an idea and send it over to your collaborator. Chances are you use totally different software and plugins, so sharing sessions is probably not possible (in one case one of us was using a notation program and the other a tracker so... yeah, not even close!).
Honestly collabing is a lot of fun. The most fun part is sending something over and then they tweak it or add a layer you never would have thought of. You end up learning a lot.
If you're a total masochist you could try using Ohm Studio, it's a kind of real-time online DAW. I did a few collabs in that, which was a lot of hair pulling and pain- we used a sample library we all had copies of so that we could work on everything together. I wouldn't recommend it, but we did have a lot of fun, and streamed/recorded the whole thing too.
At 1/25/21 07:40 PM, AceMantra wrote: As someone who has never collaborated with another musician, I'm curious to know your experience. What did the workflows look like? Did you pass .wav files back and forth, or did you stick to one project? What worked or didn't work? Any advice?
I would say, find someone who might be interested, and try to send files over again for inspiration?
