Colloaborative music making, online.
April 11, 2004 2:02 PM Subscribe
Colloaborative music making, online.
[more inside]
The basic idea is this. Someone records a track to a song, like a rhythm guitar or a piano. User #2 from Wherever, China, records another track to layer on top. User #3 from India records a sitar part to layer. User #4 from Seattle layers vocals. And so on and so on, until the members of the site deem a song "completed" and what remains is a multi-cultural, collaborative creative songwriting process, the results of which are free to download to anyone around the world.
So some basic ideas as to what would be needed to implement the ideas,and procedural ideas, are as follows:
Most likely a standardized method of recording tracks and mixing them to the tracks already posted by contributors. As designing a whole new recording software would be way to much work, perhaps we could use a free version of existing software, like Acid 2.0 The individual tracks could be posted or emailed to the moderator to be added to the ongoing mix.
A system by which users could see what was being worked on, and choose a song to add to.
A way to "lock out" songs that already have 3-4 members contributing, so as to reduce the possibility of there being like 40 add ons to one song all at once, resulting in chaos.
Voting system to rate submissions, and whether they should be included into the kernel song or not.
Lots more issues, these are the ones I could think of off the bat.
If anyone is interested in doing this, then we can have a wiki or site elsewhere to talk about development. I just thought I would throw the idea out here and see if anyone bites. We would need someone to program a site, as I am not a coder. Anyone else think this could be incredibly cool?
[more inside]
The basic idea is this. Someone records a track to a song, like a rhythm guitar or a piano. User #2 from Wherever, China, records another track to layer on top. User #3 from India records a sitar part to layer. User #4 from Seattle layers vocals. And so on and so on, until the members of the site deem a song "completed" and what remains is a multi-cultural, collaborative creative songwriting process, the results of which are free to download to anyone around the world.
So some basic ideas as to what would be needed to implement the ideas,and procedural ideas, are as follows:
Most likely a standardized method of recording tracks and mixing them to the tracks already posted by contributors. As designing a whole new recording software would be way to much work, perhaps we could use a free version of existing software, like Acid 2.0 The individual tracks could be posted or emailed to the moderator to be added to the ongoing mix.
A system by which users could see what was being worked on, and choose a song to add to.
A way to "lock out" songs that already have 3-4 members contributing, so as to reduce the possibility of there being like 40 add ons to one song all at once, resulting in chaos.
Voting system to rate submissions, and whether they should be included into the kernel song or not.
Lots more issues, these are the ones I could think of off the bat.
If anyone is interested in doing this, then we can have a wiki or site elsewhere to talk about development. I just thought I would throw the idea out here and see if anyone bites. We would need someone to program a site, as I am not a coder. Anyone else think this could be incredibly cool?
Response by poster: Emelenjr: Glad to hear you are interested. I see what you mean about setting the direction, but I think that could be overcome to some extent. I mean, you know those games in middle school where one person draws a shape, and then the next, and so on, and what comes out at the end is totally different and cool? That's kind of what I was thinking here. I mean, here's a hypothetical line for the development of a song:
User #1 : Accoustic rhythm guitar track
User #2: radiohead-esque sample layering
User #3: Funk bass line
User #4: Hurdy-gurdy background
User #5: Bjork-esque vocals
and so on and so on....
Also, one would have to have someone (I suppose that would be me, if the site ever actually materialized) that would mix and master the tracks. That would mean that sumbission #12 to the song could end up coming out as louder in the mix than #1 and so on. Who knows? Fun to play around with in theory, however.
posted by lazaruslong at 2:15 PM on April 11, 2004
User #1 : Accoustic rhythm guitar track
User #2: radiohead-esque sample layering
User #3: Funk bass line
User #4: Hurdy-gurdy background
User #5: Bjork-esque vocals
and so on and so on....
Also, one would have to have someone (I suppose that would be me, if the site ever actually materialized) that would mix and master the tracks. That would mean that sumbission #12 to the song could end up coming out as louder in the mix than #1 and so on. Who knows? Fun to play around with in theory, however.
posted by lazaruslong at 2:15 PM on April 11, 2004
Response by poster: on preview: dflemingdotorg, that sounds great. let's let this askme thread continue for a bit, and see if anyone else is interested, and then maybe we can set up a wiki or site elsewhere to talk about it and develop some beta strategies.
posted by lazaruslong at 2:16 PM on April 11, 2004
posted by lazaruslong at 2:16 PM on April 11, 2004
This sounds interesting. I'm a bass player who can yell and play a bit of keyboards. I'm also a programmer, although my particular specialty, Lotus Notes, is unlikely to be of any help.
Anyway, keep us posted, I know I'd be interested in participating.
posted by alex_reno at 2:57 PM on April 11, 2004
Anyway, keep us posted, I know I'd be interested in participating.
posted by alex_reno at 2:57 PM on April 11, 2004
This has been happening for some time over at ReasonStation where I have some of my own songs. Propellerheads Reason is music software that enables you to write all elements of a song in one editable file so it's easy to pass around the internet. I've been using it the last 3 years and love it now as I did when I heard the first two seconds of a demo song 3 years ago. I've occasionaly done online collaborations with people from around the world......someone lays done a couple of tracks, then the other person adds another track and so on. Also, people remix other people's songs. It's all good fun. We also review each other's songs and see how people made them so you can really learn fast about how to use Reason well.
posted by SpaceCadet at 4:02 PM on April 11, 2004
posted by SpaceCadet at 4:02 PM on April 11, 2004
there's no need for it to be linear - if an initial track defines a certain length (and implies a certain tempo, key etc - although following those won't be enforced bt the system) then additional tracks can work as set of nodes, with any path through the nodes defining a particular "performance".
say Al records an initial track and submits it to the site.
then Bob and Bernadette, independently, write their own tracks to go with Al's. they each submit. that gives you two pieces for others to work on: Al-Bob and Al-Bernadette.
Maybe Chris and Cher submit tracks for Al-Bob. that gives you Al-Bob-Chris and Al-Bob-Cher.
but you've now got a whole pile of pieces written for the same length of time and with similar tonal and rhythmic structures. maybe putting Cher and Bernadette's tracks together would sound good. maybe Cher-Chris is amazing, even though neither had heard the other when they made their recordings.
all these combinations can be made by layering the different tracks together. the mixes might sound pretty crude if done automatically, but people could remix them and submit them....
do you see what I mean? the site programming work is not that much more than the linear relationship your thinking of, but is a lot more open to generating new ideas... (the drawback is that successive people can't modify the previous work, except as "remixes" - they could start their own graphs of related tracks, but it would usually be a separate set because teh recording time would change).
posted by andrew cooke at 4:47 PM on April 11, 2004
say Al records an initial track and submits it to the site.
then Bob and Bernadette, independently, write their own tracks to go with Al's. they each submit. that gives you two pieces for others to work on: Al-Bob and Al-Bernadette.
Maybe Chris and Cher submit tracks for Al-Bob. that gives you Al-Bob-Chris and Al-Bob-Cher.
but you've now got a whole pile of pieces written for the same length of time and with similar tonal and rhythmic structures. maybe putting Cher and Bernadette's tracks together would sound good. maybe Cher-Chris is amazing, even though neither had heard the other when they made their recordings.
all these combinations can be made by layering the different tracks together. the mixes might sound pretty crude if done automatically, but people could remix them and submit them....
do you see what I mean? the site programming work is not that much more than the linear relationship your thinking of, but is a lot more open to generating new ideas... (the drawback is that successive people can't modify the previous work, except as "remixes" - they could start their own graphs of related tracks, but it would usually be a separate set because teh recording time would change).
posted by andrew cooke at 4:47 PM on April 11, 2004
Myself and Ryan Mitchell-Smith did this to record my latest album. We both use CoolEdit (although I use a newer version).
I wrote the songs, we recorded them at our own homes, and sent each other various tracks and mixdowns.
Please; listen to tracks 3, 6, 2, 4, 9 and 11. In that order.
posted by armoured-ant at 5:10 PM on April 11, 2004
I wrote the songs, we recorded them at our own homes, and sent each other various tracks and mixdowns.
Please; listen to tracks 3, 6, 2, 4, 9 and 11. In that order.
posted by armoured-ant at 5:10 PM on April 11, 2004
Sounds like an interesting idea if the details could be worked out. I can struggle my way through a piano piece (really want to learn again though), but do a good bit of programming for enjoyment. My main forte is Perl, which can be excellent for web programming and backends (and I've had experience writing them). I also have some *nix admin experience. Feel free to contact me if you want (see my user page).
posted by thebabelfish at 5:44 PM on April 11, 2004
posted by thebabelfish at 5:44 PM on April 11, 2004
I did a trick like that on a record once. We recorded to protools and ftp'd a rough mix to the harmonica player in Portland. He then recorded a couple of takes and ftp'd the sdii files to us in Seattle. On the same record, I recorded the steel parts in my living room in DP4 and took the sdiis to the studio where we combined them in protools.
The big limitation for this sort of thing is the bandwidth. If it's a hobby project, you could email/ftp mp3s back and forth, but that's obviously not going to cut it for serious listeners. I don't think the file formats (assuming full-size files) are going to be a huge problem. I think most recording software uses the same basic format for the tracks. If nothing else, each participant can export their track to aiff/wav and the next participant can sample or import the track into their software. I think timestamps will be lost doing that, though.
An easy way to check if this would be fun or worth automating would be to start something like this on the honor system. Just have a list of tracks on an http site and a notation of who has what 'checked out'. The tracks themselves could be stored on an ftp server which could be password protected or not. There might be a canned CVS that could manage the files that way.
I read an article in Tape Op where a record was done over the net. The musicians involved actually ran ISDN lines to their houses to get the necesary bandwidth.
Those are just my unstructured thoughts. I look forward to seeing what comes of the idea. Good luck.
posted by stet at 6:01 PM on April 11, 2004
The big limitation for this sort of thing is the bandwidth. If it's a hobby project, you could email/ftp mp3s back and forth, but that's obviously not going to cut it for serious listeners. I don't think the file formats (assuming full-size files) are going to be a huge problem. I think most recording software uses the same basic format for the tracks. If nothing else, each participant can export their track to aiff/wav and the next participant can sample or import the track into their software. I think timestamps will be lost doing that, though.
An easy way to check if this would be fun or worth automating would be to start something like this on the honor system. Just have a list of tracks on an http site and a notation of who has what 'checked out'. The tracks themselves could be stored on an ftp server which could be password protected or not. There might be a canned CVS that could manage the files that way.
I read an article in Tape Op where a record was done over the net. The musicians involved actually ran ISDN lines to their houses to get the necesary bandwidth.
Those are just my unstructured thoughts. I look forward to seeing what comes of the idea. Good luck.
posted by stet at 6:01 PM on April 11, 2004
Worth noting: the crowd at songfight has created a number of tracks in this manner, but with all the coordination done by email and bbs posting. Some of them have solid experience developing web apps and I think the idea of automating the admin of song collaboration would appeal -- you might be able to find a couple hands for your dev crew by posting on the dumbrella boards, even just a link to this thread.
posted by damehex at 6:37 PM on April 11, 2004
posted by damehex at 6:37 PM on April 11, 2004
one way to reduce bandwidth would be to work with some kind of software synth and exchange the programs rather than the music. but obviously that would reduce th epopularity hugely.
posted by andrew cooke at 6:40 PM on April 11, 2004
posted by andrew cooke at 6:40 PM on April 11, 2004
"The musicians involved actually ran ISDN lines to their houses to get the necesary bandwidth."
Residential ISDN is about 1/10th the bandwidth of DSL or a cable modem, and usually about twice as expensive. I seriously doubt that the use of ISDN by these folks is an indicator of the bandwidth necessary to send uncompressed studio-quality audio around, which is indeed massive. Maybe you mean T1 lines or something like that?
In any case, the real development work will be tools for the management of the effort on each track. The actual audio bits, and combining them, are relatively easy: everybody agrees to a common format, such as WAV or AIFF at 48KHz, and can use just about any old tool to add their track. Multichannel audio editors are legion, some are even free. Once all the tracks are laid down, of course, there's the headache of getting the mix just so without each participant clamoring for more cowbell.
posted by majick at 8:39 PM on April 11, 2004
Residential ISDN is about 1/10th the bandwidth of DSL or a cable modem, and usually about twice as expensive. I seriously doubt that the use of ISDN by these folks is an indicator of the bandwidth necessary to send uncompressed studio-quality audio around, which is indeed massive. Maybe you mean T1 lines or something like that?
In any case, the real development work will be tools for the management of the effort on each track. The actual audio bits, and combining them, are relatively easy: everybody agrees to a common format, such as WAV or AIFF at 48KHz, and can use just about any old tool to add their track. Multichannel audio editors are legion, some are even free. Once all the tracks are laid down, of course, there's the headache of getting the mix just so without each participant clamoring for more cowbell.
posted by majick at 8:39 PM on April 11, 2004
I invented something like this - Songforge, but promtply stopped developing it. Feel free to muck about with it.
posted by Jimbob at 8:51 PM on April 11, 2004
posted by Jimbob at 8:51 PM on April 11, 2004
Acid is pretty horrendous for making "serious" homemade music in. Cakewalk Home Studio is the closest to a standard, and it's quite good.
posted by abcde at 8:59 PM on April 11, 2004
posted by abcde at 8:59 PM on April 11, 2004
stet: You might be thinking of ISDN, by The Future Sound of London. It was named such because the duo used ISDN to collaborate when one was away from the studio, and due to the fact that ISDN made it possible to 'webcast' live to different venues, waaay back in 1994.
abcde: I know a good number of professional musicians who would disagree with you on that point.
posted by Jairus at 10:06 PM on April 11, 2004
abcde: I know a good number of professional musicians who would disagree with you on that point.
posted by Jairus at 10:06 PM on April 11, 2004
stet: If nothing else, each participant can export their track to aiff/wav and the next participant can sample or import the track into their software. I think timestamps will be lost doing that, though.
The problem there is though.....you can't properly EQ/compress/adjust the wav, not like you can do if it's still in "file format" (i.e. if it's written using a soft synth/sampler). Let's say the wav I've been given has a little too much reverb in the current mix - I can't properly "unreverb" it - it's flat format. Online communities that share the same softsynths make this "editability" possible (see ReasonStation).
andrewcooke: one way to reduce bandwidth would be to work with some kind of software synth and exchange the programs rather than the music. but obviously that would reduce th epopularity hugely.
Yup, I often upload entire songs no bigger than 10k in Reason. Another person can hear this 10k song because they have the exact same samples sitting on their hard-drive that the MIDI triggers. It's pure MIDI information and controller movements. This file can then be exported to WAV (as high as 96k 24bit quality). Sorry to plug once more but Reason was designed for small file size and also to self-contain all the sounds (so it comes in one, editable file). Because it's editable, the mastering can be done later - that's important because if you take the other route of layering waves on top of each other, you have to master-as-you-go-along (sounds very limiting creative-wise to me).
posted by SpaceCadet at 3:59 AM on April 12, 2004
The problem there is though.....you can't properly EQ/compress/adjust the wav, not like you can do if it's still in "file format" (i.e. if it's written using a soft synth/sampler). Let's say the wav I've been given has a little too much reverb in the current mix - I can't properly "unreverb" it - it's flat format. Online communities that share the same softsynths make this "editability" possible (see ReasonStation).
andrewcooke: one way to reduce bandwidth would be to work with some kind of software synth and exchange the programs rather than the music. but obviously that would reduce th epopularity hugely.
Yup, I often upload entire songs no bigger than 10k in Reason. Another person can hear this 10k song because they have the exact same samples sitting on their hard-drive that the MIDI triggers. It's pure MIDI information and controller movements. This file can then be exported to WAV (as high as 96k 24bit quality). Sorry to plug once more but Reason was designed for small file size and also to self-contain all the sounds (so it comes in one, editable file). Because it's editable, the mastering can be done later - that's important because if you take the other route of layering waves on top of each other, you have to master-as-you-go-along (sounds very limiting creative-wise to me).
posted by SpaceCadet at 3:59 AM on April 12, 2004
Majick: It was ISDN and it was a while ago (in Internet if not rock and roll time). I'll see if I can find the article and get back to you. The Future Sound of London, as Jairus suggested, may well be what I'm thinking of. I'll check when I'm home and have access to my magazine stack.
posted by stet at 7:57 AM on April 12, 2004
posted by stet at 7:57 AM on April 12, 2004
If I understand your concept correctly, it was first made real several years ago by ResRocket (which changed its name to RocketNetwork.) Go look them up on Google.
RocketNetwork was a ProTools plugin which enabled close to realtime collaboration between musicians recording audio on ProTools. The manipulated files were transmitted as compressed audio and when everyone was happy the matching uncompressed audio files were stitched together.
The company went out of business but was bought by DigiDesign who make ProTools. I have no idea whether the service still exists. I would imagine it was patented to the hilt, though.
posted by skylar at 10:23 AM on April 12, 2004
RocketNetwork was a ProTools plugin which enabled close to realtime collaboration between musicians recording audio on ProTools. The manipulated files were transmitted as compressed audio and when everyone was happy the matching uncompressed audio files were stitched together.
The company went out of business but was bought by DigiDesign who make ProTools. I have no idea whether the service still exists. I would imagine it was patented to the hilt, though.
posted by skylar at 10:23 AM on April 12, 2004
Response by poster: Ah well. And here I was thinking I was all originial and whatnot. Well, perhaps I will sit down one day and muck around with it some more. Thanks for all the info, everyone! Email me if you are super interested in getting something started.
posted by lazaruslong at 12:18 PM on April 12, 2004
posted by lazaruslong at 12:18 PM on April 12, 2004
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by emelenjr at 2:09 PM on April 11, 2004