{"id":100,"date":"2011-01-13T22:25:12","date_gmt":"2011-01-14T03:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/?p=100"},"modified":"2021-06-21T11:27:25","modified_gmt":"2021-06-21T15:27:25","slug":"collaborating-online-to-make-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/2011\/01\/13\/collaborating-online-to-make-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Collaborating Online to Make Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prompted by a quick Twitter invitation this evening by Alec Couros(@courosa<\/a>), I contributed the following, “Managing Multiple Tracks” (recorded in multiple locations)”<\/em> to a Google Doc that has been started to support a Virtual Choir Project<\/strong>.  A former student of Alec’s is looking to coordinate a music project for her mother, who is battling cancer. I’ve seen Alec use Google Docs to crowd-source and gather information quickly a few times now — the power of a far-flung group of individuals to work together to create something in short order is truly amazing. Kind of like an online barn-raising<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Our Backstory:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Ontario<\/a>Just prior to the 2010 Winter holiday break, the North Point iBand video<\/a> started to circulate, and a group of us started discussing on Twitter the possibility of doing something similar. Great in theory, but with the interested parties scattered across Ontario<\/em> (and some beyond the borders), the prospect of getting together face-to-face was difficult to do at a moment’s notice. However, a quick search for “online collaborative music” led to the site kompoz.com<\/a>, and after creating a profile and inviting a few tweeps to join, it wasn’t long before we had our first song up and running (~24 hours, to be exact). Further songs followed, until our culminating (to date) rendering of Auld Lang Syne reached final mix status at 11:45 pm EST (10:45 EST for the specially-released ATLANTIC TIME version) on New Years Eve. We all enjoyed the project (more could be said on that), but what follows is a brief discussion of our process:<\/p>\n

Managing Multiple Tracks (recorded in multiple locations)<\/strong><\/p>\n

A group of us used www.kompoz.com<\/a> to re-create five well-known seasonal songs over the winter holiday. Most of our discussion occurred in small 140-character tweets, supported by the kompoz<\/a> site which allows for the uploading and downloading of .mp3 files (in our case exported from Garage Band), and which allows for tracks to be designated by instruments, mixdown, and a rudimentary versioning history.<\/p>\n

Our process was:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Start with a very basic, simply-timed foundation track (piano and a rhythm track say)<\/li>\n
  2. Export the foundation track as .mp3 from GarageBand. Provide simple sheet music, if available<\/li>\n
  3. Upload and tag tracks to kompoz.com<\/a> (tied to a specific project)<\/li>\n
  4. Other participants download the foundation track,<\/li>\n
  5. Create their own track (same time\/key\/tempo etc.),<\/li>\n
  6. Export their track (alone, by turning foundation track volume to 0 before export)<\/li>\n
  7. Upload their track to kompoz.com<\/a> project site.<\/li>\n
  8. Various mixes can then be created by combining the separate voice\/instrument tracks, with variations of track volume as required.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    While we didn\u2019t get any vocal performances this time (folks were probably a bit shy), the process should work just as well for vocal as for instrumental.  A key when recording live audio is to listen to the foundation track with headphones, recording only the new audio to the new track. It makes for easier re-mixing.  As most of us were working on Macs, GarageBand<\/strong> was the natural program to use.<\/p>\n

    Perhaps one of the best things of the project was that “it just happened.” We didn’t need to wait to get together face-to-face, folks joined in as their interest and time permitted, and I think we all were very pleased with the results. Spontaneity, collaboration, and a holiday spirit helped to make for a great project.<\/p>\n

    Check out our Auld Lang Syne (HTML5-friendly link, just in case you’re browsing on an (ahem) cool<\/em> Apple iDevice)<\/p>\n\n

    and see our projects and files at: www.kompoz.com\/site\/OntarioEdTweeps<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Prompted by a quick Twitter invitation this evening by Alec Couros(@courosa), I contributed the following, “Managing Multiple Tracks” (recorded...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,16],"tags":[21,1078,20,17,18,19],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-juxtaposed-tones","category-something-made","tag-assignment1","tag-ds106","tag-kompoz-com","tag-music","tag-ontarioedtweeps","tag-twitterholidayorchestra"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/OET_TwitterHolidayOrchestra.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2UvWF-1C","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":52,"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12435,"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/12435"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aforgrave.ca\/detritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}