by danwilson5 » Sun Mar 22, 2020 6:13 pm
Hi Peter,
Thanks, it was a lot of fun working with Ian and my brother on this song.
Our Procession of Collaboration:
Sure, it started when Ian wrote "Hey Dan, nice work buddy, that's my kind of rock n roll I could play in that band if you know what I mean, it's my kind of stuff, nice and catchy." about the song "Gone Down Home". I took that to mean he would be interested in collaborating on a song. Since I liked the way Ian plays and the guitar tones he gets, I jumped at the opportunity.
The easy part...
1.) You need to agree on bit depth and sample rate. (We used 24 bit/ 44.1kHz)
2.) What DAWS you use. (Didn't think that would matter but it does...sometimes)
3.) Method of file transfer. (We used Dropbox)
4.) Send a rough mix of the song. (In this case drums, bass, scratch vocal and 1 guitar)
The careful part...
You have to agree on what does collaboration mean. This can be tricky, especially about something you wrote. Both Ian and I negotiated this carefully in the beginning, after all we only knew each other from this website and the things we each had posted. My take on collaboration is give the other person freedom to be creative and listen to and respect their criticisms. I felt that if we were going to really collaborate Ian, Kelly (my brother) and I would have to be equal partners in this endeavour. Which means...
Building Trust...
For example, Ian came up with the guitar harmony part at the beginning after I said we needed something after the first 8 bars.
My brother thought that it should be an 1/8 note later, so I moved it and sent it back to Ian. Ian was polite about it but stated his position on the change. I could tell in the writing he was being careful but a little more back and forth and in the end we all concluded he was right. I think that broke the ice and a more honest flow of ideas followed.
Patience is a must...
This process took a couple of months from start to finish. Its not like a bunch of friends getting together hashing out a song and then going into a studio to record it. Another cool thing is the time difference between New Zealand and Canada which meant Ian would start his weekend a day before we did. So every time Kelly and I got together to work on the song it was like Christmas...what did Ian send us this week? Both of us found that inspiring and I hoped each revised mix I sent Ian would inspire him as well.
Communication...
Besides dropbox, Ian would also post ideas privately on soundcloud and ask what I thought. This helped speed up the process, as this happened mid-week. I think most comments, if not all, were "don't change a thing send it over". As Kelly and I were putting down our tracks I would send a revised mix of the song and a suggestion about what was needed next to Ian.
DAW problems...
I use logic and Ian uses Reaper. We did run into one problem sending files back and forth, you would think that the file would all play in sync if we all agree to start the files at bar 1. It took us a Saturday evening frantically emailing back and forth trying to solve the problem and we sorted it out.
So far there has been no talk about playing music or how things were recorded/ mixed, which goes to show that music is really about interaction between humans. I hope this helps explain our process of collaboration. Sorry about it being so long.
Dan
)
Seriously, though, I think our developers are amazing and agree. As an old fogey with plenty of amps and analog experience I love having AmpliTube and T-RackS and all of these tools virtually. In general, recording in the box is great for getting creative ideas out quickly and effectively - and... no more razor blades!