on-line collaborations?

TTony

Does anyone here do any music-making via on-line collaborations?

If so, how do you share and version control the contributions from the collaborators?  I'm guessing via cloud storage services rather than emailing files to each other, but which service is good for this sort of thing?

TIA ...

IvisonGuitars

@TTony I've recently started doing something similar, sharing song ideas and demos with the rest of my band, we all use Dropbox as we can upload a ProTools/Logic session for the player to add his part then re-upload. Seems pretty good so far.

spark240

I have done dropbox stuff with my mate, just sending files back & forth etc.

What are you trying to do exactly?

johnswiss

Drop box, and sometimes a big usb stick in the post!

digitalkettle

I've done a bit.

I use Dropbox. I only ship *wav* files when I really need to: a good quality mp3 mixdown is good enough to record over.

Also, you might want to nominate one person as the 'project manager'...they collect all the wav stem tracks and make the big decisions.

paulodrums

You can use DropBox, or even WeTransfer.

If anyone needs any drums, feel free to get in touch.

Have Logic Pro X, Cubase Pro 8, ProTools 11, Studio One 2 and 3 and also Ableton Live Suite 9.

digitalkettle

Hey Paul...you could be popular around here

TTony

spark240 said:

What are you trying to do exactly?

At the moment, I'm just doing a bit of research into the practicalities, but ...

Let's say that there was an on-line community of musicians.  And guitarists.

Let's say that someone had the bright idea of trying to organise that community of musicians to actually write & record some music amongst themselves.  The how and who and what and when wouldn't have been discussed at the early, just doing some research, stage.

But one thing that would be needed would be a way of exchanging tracks between each other as the final piece of music was being built up.

I use DropBox to sync work files across a number of devices, but have found it to be a bit of a pita to use it for other purposes because those other files then also get sync'd to all the connected devices (even though I don't want them to).  

There's no automatic version control either, so if the group of collaborators was (say) 4 or 5 people, we could quite easily get unintentional over-writes.

Hence wondering whether there was anything out there that was designed specifically for this sort of situation.

TTony

paulodrums said:

If anyone needs any drums, feel free to get in touch.

You're going to be popular.

digitalkettle

TTony said:

There's no automatic version control either, so if the group of collaborators was (say) 4 or 5 people, we could quite easily get unintentional over-writes.

Only if there's no 'project manager' and you're sharing entire projects.

Typical lo-tech approach:

• Project Manager (PM) starts project (in whatever application they're using)
  
• PM records some tracks...maybe it's bass and drums
  
• PM exports an mp3 mix and sends to guitarist
  
• Guitarist records a few tracks...sends an mp3 mix back for approval...it's good...guitarist sends wav stem tracks to PM
  
• maybe the guitarist removes the extra mix stuff he added to show his ideas in context
• PM has a bit of a playaround and exports another mp3 mix...this time for keys, vocalist, etc.
  
• ...and so on...

speshul91

i can't write music for shit but i'd be happy to lay a few basslines down if they are pre written

TTony

So, it was Drew's idea/thought/suggestion, and he's got a thread going here ...

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/42704/a-possible-songwriting-collaboration-project

... to discuss some of the other details.

mellowsun

If individual files are < 100 MB, you could use GitHub for version control.

Rowby1

Dropbox or WeTransfer. Working with a guy in Denmark at the mo and have done guitar and banjo sessions for guys in NZ and Honk Kong in the past. Mp3s are fine to send to work against but .wav files for anything that's actually going to be used in the mix.

Drew_TNBD

mellowsun said:

If individual files are < 100 MB, you could use GitHub for version control.

Yeah we talked about GitHub, but we felt it wasn't really as user-friendly as it could be.

mellowsun

Drew_fx said:

mellowsun said:

If individual files are < 100 MB, you could use GitHub for version control.

Yeah we talked about GitHub, but we felt it wasn't really as user-friendly as it could be.

Hmm, I see a potential start-up opportunity. Something like GitHub for musicians, but as easy to use as Dropbox.

PolarityMan

digitalkettle said:

TTony said:

There's no automatic version control either, so if the group of collaborators was (say) 4 or 5 people, we could quite easily get unintentional over-writes.

Only if there's no 'project manager' and you're sharing entire projects.

Typical lo-tech approach:

• Project Manager (PM) starts project (in whatever application they're using)
  
• PM records some tracks...maybe it's bass and drums
  
• PM exports an mp3 mix and sends to guitarist
  
• Guitarist records a few tracks...sends an mp3 mix back for approval...it's good...guitarist sends wav stem tracks to PM
  
• maybe the guitarist removes the extra mix stuff he added to show his ideas in context
• PM has a bit of a playaround and exports another mp3 mix...this time for keys, vocalist, etc.
  
• ...and so on...

From a writing perspective I prefer to do bass guitars and drums simultaneously...... so for me id prefer to submit say a verse, or middle-8 and someone else does another whole section, then at the end you can ping back the whole thing to be played by one of 2 people or reamped to get the tone consistent.

spark240

Not used this ....but someone put me onto it yesterday.

https://www.jamkazam.com

Shark_Eyes

We use BaseCamp at work for collaborative projects, you can have sub-projects and specific groups of people with permissions to read or contribute. It's also got versioning

I think it's free up-until a file size limit.

Phil_aka_Pip

I collaborated with a chap in Djakarta. He emailed me a compressed MP3 version of his track, which I imported into my workstation and then made up a number of guitar tracks. I exported these guitar tracks to CD and from thence to DropBox. He sysnced my recordings to his high definition originals and put the result on SoundCloud. Its the only time I've done it but does it make me an international recording artiste?