By Tom Mulhern
One of the thrills of playing an instrument is getting together with other musicians to jam. Admittedly, a lot of it is just plain jousting, showing off, and thrashing. But sometimes there’s magic, sometimes you and others learn from each other, and sometimes it leads to forming a band. Anything can happen. The fact is, collaboration is a potent part of musicianship, and the end product is often great music.
We’re still not at the point where we can collaborate "live" online, mostly because the bandwidth isn’t there and partly because the software to do it hasn’t evolved sufficiently. But even if simultaneous collaboration isn’t quite fully baked, there is a lot we can do to work together using existing tools and the Internet. Until we can do everything online that we can do side by side, here are some suggestions:
Don’t forget about the "real" world. Don’t laugh, but it’s easy to overlook what we’ve already got. I know a lot of people who now rely so much on email that it doesn’t occur to them to just pick up the phone and talk to someone. Stupid? Well, let’s say that they’re a bit too tangled in the World Wide Web phenomenon. You may already be in a band or working with other musicians. Sometimes your schedules are tight and out of sync (school, job, etc.), and getting together in real time is tough. Work together when you can, and then use the Internet as a way to connect according to your own schedule. Leave mp3 demos for your fellow bandmembers somewhere you can all get to, or attach them to emails. Most ISPs–Internet Service Providers–include a few megabytes of space in addition to access; use it. (And, no, these demos don’t have to be polished.) It’s easier and cheaper than mailing or dropping off cassettes or CDs, plus it can save you time. And if you and your musical cohorts have the same software, you can send files back and forth for each other to add parts, audition different mixes, etc. Sometimes the files may be huge, but if you have a flat-rate access, you can tell your computer to do uploads before you head out to class or work, or before you go to bed.
Meet and greet. There are lots of places to meet other musicians online: want-ads, discussion groups (such as the many rec.musicmakers groups), and chat rooms. Your taste in music will probably lead you to others with similar interests. It may also lead you into musical territories you never expected, which could be a real creative shot in the arm.
Demo yourself. Work up a couple of your tunes and then put together a site with some of your pieces. Think of it as an ongoing audition. You will have to decide, though, how much and what you want to make public, since it’s remotely possible that someone might outright steal your ideas.
Choose your medium. Audio might not be what you want to pass back and forth when developing music with another person. You might find instead that sending MIDI files is the easiest way to get your ides from point A to point B. If you work out tunes using a sound generator that uses the General MIDI set of sounds, your colleague at the other end of the Internet can play those files with similar results if his or her sound module is also equipped for General MIDI. Many sound cards now include General MIDI, so the capability may be part of your computer and therefore requires no outboard gear.
Same software, different place. You may have to make an investment in software (and in learning it) so that you can collaborate most effectively with someone else. For the convenience, it’s worth it. The idea is to clear any obstacles standing between you and a finished piece of music, and offloading music from one program to another or doing premature mixes can slow the process. Make sure you and your collaborators are running the same version of the software, too.
Back each other up. At different stages in your project, it’s a good idea to make backups. It’s always best if you can keep a backup copy of what you’re doing at a different location, so do it! Send finished or "work-in-progress" files to your collaborators so that they can stash them on a disk or tape drive or CD. Keep your collaborators’ finished files, too. That way, if a hard drive crashes at either end, or a file gets overwritten or corrupted, there’s always a backup in a safe place.
Remember virus protection. If you’re passing files back and forth, make sure you have virus protection turned on (and make sure your anti-virus software is up to date). It’s possible for a bug to get into your machine or your collaborator’s, especially if other people have access to the computers.
Use multiple ways to transfer info. If you have a dedicated phone line (or a cable modem or DSL or ISDN line) for your computer and a separate voice phone line, don’t forget that you can talk to a person rather than email (unless they’re so far away that it’s prohibitively expensive). If you are collaborating on a song or a mix, and you both have the same software and the same tune to work from, you can both be trying different things and discussing them simultaneously. Talk about strategies, critique your work, compare different instrument combinations or settings, etc. If you or your collaborators have fax machines, then fax notes that you may have written on paper instead of spending the extra time to recopy them in a neater fashion. You can also send musical notation to each other; print out what your collaborator sends, place it on your music stand, and play it. If you have a fast enough connection and a fast enough computer, you might want to consider getting small cameras for your computers so that you can show each other ideas, especially if you both play the same instrument.
Don’t lose the human touch. More than anything else, keep in mind that the idea of the Internet is communication. One of the problems that came from the home-studio revolution of the 1980s was isolation and music that sounded sterile or dry, and often pretty dull. We now have the chance to work in our personal studios with other musicians, reintroducing push and pull and the fun of working with others. So get busy!